Musings for the day

[gordon]

Suppose you’re want to go on a fairground ride. One that takes you up in the air and spins you around wildly. You’re feeling adventurous and brave, so you go to buy a ticket and notice a large CAUTION sign that reads:

• STANDARD WEIGHT PEOPLE ONLY!

Standard weight? What is a “standard weight” person? 150 lbs? 200 lbs?

If you can’t get a precise answer, I bet you’d pass on the ride no matter how adventurous and brave you’re feeling.

So what does this have to do with racing slot cars? Let’s see how a rule like this sounds:

• Magnets: A single currently-available standard Slot.It "non-race" magnet (the one with the grooves) which must be positioned in any of the standard locations on the Slot.It motor pod.

Standard Slot.It "non-race” magnet? What is the strength of a “standard Slot.It "non-race” magnet”? 100 Gauss? 1000 Gaus, 10000 Gauss?

If you can’t get an answer and a way to test it, would you race a slot car in a class with such a rule? After all, your Slot.It magnet may be 1000 Gauss while your competitor’s identical-looking Slot.It magnet is 1500 Gauss. Would you have a chance against him?

It’s pretty stupid to set up a rule which cannot be checked, isn’t it? Especially in an area that severely impacts slot car performance.

We currently have eight magnet classes and seven of them use the USD rule to measure magnet downforce. There’s just one class that has this stupid, un-checkable rule.

Oh well, just my musings for the day.

[steveaca]

Agreed. I'd be happy to see the Upside Down Rule (or some variation of it) adopted for Slot.it Challenge next year. By extension however, a similar argument could be made for other components such as motors (especially motors !) and tyres. We need to be careful not to go overboard.

[gordon]

Steve, why do you mention motors? We specify limits on them for each class. Tyres are generally free of restrictions in our classes, other than some cases where dimensions are limited. Are you referring specifically to our Slot.It class?

[steveaca]

Hi Gordon.
I've mentioned motors as in the same way that 'standard 'magnets of the same dimensions from a single manufacturer can vary widely in strength, so can motors of the same specification from a single manufacturer vary in performance.
We try to eliminate the variance in magnetic downforce with the Upside Down rule to good effect. Should we now say that, well we've standardized downforce, let's standardize motor performance too. We know that motor performance varies widely, even with the same specification from the same manufacturer, so should we then say that motors must all be tested to ensure that they comply with the RPM requirements ? This would be extremely impractical.
I was just being the devil's advocate here, and trying to get the point across that we shouldn't over-regulate things.

[gordon]

In clarification to my views on this topic, we know that in magnet racing, probably the biggest performance differentiator is magnet strength/downforce. While we have regulated this with all but one of our magnet classes, I feel its just not smart to have done so and yet still have a class where magnet strength is based on the luck of the draw - either you have it right or you don't, with no option to fix it.

Here's a real-life example. The last time we ran Slot.It Challenge (SC) just a few weeks ago, O'Brie's Mazda was handling poorly and when I hand-checked its downforce compared with my SC Nissan, it had a lot less. We checked the ground clearance and it was as low under the magnet as mine. I then found the strongest legal SC magnet I had in my collection (by checking them all on on the magnet marshall) and he installed it in the Mazda and while the downforce was improved, it still was way off that of my Nissan. His car was therefore uncompetitive and he could do nothing to make it so.

Should he stop racing in SC?

[obrie]

I will say that you make a valid point G. I do have to go over the Mazda again as i am sure I can find a tweak to improve the proformance but the gap was huge! I doubt that it will have a chance in any case. This rule has always bothered me as the good “standard” magnet is no longer available anyway! We can look at it some more and see what can be a decent improvement

[gordon]

I just tested my SC Nissan on the USD block and, although it stuck to it, it took just pulling the front wheels down very slightly for the car to drop off the block. If it had to conform to the USD rule, this can be accomplished by any one or combination of the following:

• adding a bit of weight towards the front (within the "maximum distance ahead of the rear axle" requirement)
• putting on slightly taller Slot.It rear tyres
• using larger-diameter Slot.It rear wheels
• using a Slot.It motor pod with a different offset
• using a weaker Slot.It magnet

Lots of ways to solve the problem instead of none as in O'Brie's situation above.

[Luke]

Here's a real-life example. The last time we ran Slot.It Challenge (SC) just a few weeks ago, O'Brie's Mazda was handling poorly and when I hand-checked its downforce compared with my SC Nissan, it had a lot less. We checked the ground clearance and it was as low under the magnet as mine. I then found the strongest legal SC magnet I had in my collection (by checking them all on on the magnet marshall) and he installed it in the Mazda and while the downforce was improved, it still was way off that of my Nissan. His car was therefore uncompetitive and he could do nothing to make it so.

Should he stop racing in SC?

Hello Gordon,

Suggestion for the Mazda 787B ...

• A new main Chassis Plate for Mazda 787B slotcar.

An early morning thought

Luke

Ps. Remembering my Nissan R390 setup way back when the SC class first started.

[gordon]

Thanks for the suggestion Luke. The thing is, he just doesn't have a strong enough legal Slot.It magnet, so a new chassis will not change the downforce.

[RameshB]

Hi guys, i did some testing on at least 5 body and chassis to find out which set up works best, this is proven tested data. car 1 was a Toyota 88c , Car 2 was a Nissan, and Car 3 was the Mazda, all three has the identical set up, why does the Nissan work best?MANY REASONS, NOT SO MUCH MAGNET NEEDED,check set up.