Pimp Your Scalextric for Top Performance

Scalextric For Schools

Scalextric slot car racing is a popular hobby that continues to grow in popularity. Like any racing hobby, enthusiasts soon start to think about ways to enhance the performance of their vehicles. Here are just a handful of techniques that will help your cars to literally fly around the track.

The principles that apply to slot cars are the same as those that apply to real life F1 racing cars and rally cars. To get more speed you can install a more powerful engine, optimise the tires and lower the weight. Optimising Scalextric cars can be very educational.

Let’s first think about the Scalextric cars engine. Your Scalextrci cars don’t use petrol engines, they use little electric motors that are very easy to swap out. You can readily find high performance Scalextric car motors that provide higher revs per minute (rpm) than those that are fitted as standard in most cars. Changing the motor will immediately give you a significant improvement in speed.

But increased speed can mean that your car will tend to fly off the track when it encounters a bend. Your car is kept on the track by means of a magnet. Most scalextric cars are fitted with magnets but you can upgrade to a stronger one that will help to keep your car on the track.

A further enhancement is to fit a new set of tires. Improving grip will improve traction and increase overall speed.

So you now have a fully pimped out Scalextric car ready to break records. But what about your Scalextric track? A few simple tweaks can make all the difference. I recommend that you try this on just one of your two tracks so that you can make a comparison.

Start by cleaning the Scalextric track. Dust and grease will lower the traction and result in wheel spin. Next, clean out the slot. The slots in your track will inevitabley gather dust and dirt. This will obviously slow the progress of your car. Keeping your slots free of dust and debris will make major improvements to your system.

The final aspect of your system that would benefit from some attention is all the electrical connections. Clean all the electrical connectors and make certain taht your car contacts are as clean as possible.

By now your car should be breaking speed limits as it whizzes aroung the track. Time to challenge someone to a race.