Magnets or no magnets , help me understand

[rick42]

I read all the time about removing the magnets. Why is this ? I am ignorant to the whole thing. I thought the whole idea was to do everything you can to keep the cars on the track. I have never tried no mags. What’s the big difference ? Do you prefer mags of no mags ? I am talking 132 and 124 mainly .

[mattb]

I prefer no magnets and that is probably the majority by a small margin. I grew up racing slot cars in the 60's and we built cars that were engineered and tuned to handle and race good. We learner thru experimenting with design. The magnets are a way to by-pass engineering and design and keep a car sticking to the track even though they are of a poor design. The cars drive in an un-natural way and get right to the limit and then blow off the track. A no mag car will drift like a real car and the driver will have more feel for how hard the car can be driven.

The magnets also allow the manufacturers to make "sh***y" tires in a day when mass produced silicone tires would be possible for all these cars. With a strong magnet the car is pulled down to the track so hard that even bad tires will drive a car.

I would guess that mass produced magnet cars were a way for the manufacturers to create something that newer enthusiasts got caught up in with the blinding speed and ease to drive the cars like the evolution of HO cars. Maybe the goal was to graduate HO guys to bigger cars by giving them the same non scale experience of blinding speed and ease of driving.

There is a reason that you read so many threads from guys about changing to urethane tires and removing magnets. I wanted a set of cars for new people to run on my track. I got a few Monogram 1/32 stock cars, removed the magnets, pulled out the heavy interiors, lowered the bodies and added weight. MY opinion, they were still junk. I gave up on that and built 5 1/24 scale open wheel champ cars for probably a little more money per car, but got a much better quality car and one that actually runs better, drives easier and is much easier to work on.

I still have one Monogram stocker, a purple Charger. My intention is to throw away the plastic junk and build an old Monogram brass chassis or scratchbuild a new brass chassis to see how good one of these cars could be with a conventional slot car chassis and moderate power.

This is just my opinion and you can tell I hate the whole magnet setup!

[HomeRacingWorld]

It is nothing more than personal preference.

Some people enjoy cars with magnets. They add even more and want that car planted as hard as it can be. If fun is being had? Mission accomplished.

Others prefer the tuning challenges and the related driving challenge of non magnet.

I don’t have any deep hatred for magnets like many seem to. I have had just as much fun running stock models on plastic with magnets as I have racing our brass chassis builds without them.

I could care less if the magnets “hide” any defects. If the car is fun to drive and I’m door to door with my friends having fun, all is well. Could care less.

Just as I have fun taking a week to just to scratchbuild a brass car. Making sure it is as straight and true as it can be. Hoping it handles like I want it to in race day. For some, that is very boring and not their idea of fun.

Just experiment for yourself and just enjoy them anyway you can. There is no wrong way.

[slowshoes]

[quote="mattb"] The cars drive in an un-natural way and get right to the limit and then blow off the track. A no mag car will drift like a real car and the driver will have more feel for how hard the car can be driven.

This is the heart of the matter for me - cars with the magnets removed drive and behave in a much more realistic way. If there were no way to remove the magnets, I would have never returned to the hobby. (I also grew up racing in the '60's).

But I agree with Harry - there's no right or wrong way with this. Just experiment and see what you like.

Matt - even though the Monograms take probably more effort to get running decent (and decent is good enough for me - I even keep the tires stock, lol), I still love them! :)

Bill

[RichD]

Years ago my club ran cars with rather powerful magnets. I did not care for those because the cars were so stuck down that you could often run them flat out around the track and they were also "all or nothing" in that they would crash with no warning, often with damage to the cars. Eventually we reduced the amount of magnetic downforce and moved the magnets forward so that the cars would slide before they came out of the slot. After we switched to routed tracks magnets became useless except as weights.
If you chuck the magnets any defects that a car might have will be more apparent, in order to fix those defects you will need to do some tuning and you may have to spend some money on aftermarket parts. Even more expensive cars like Slot.its and NSRs, which come with good parts, will need to be tuned if you run them without magnets.
I am aware that there are a lot of people that just want to take a car out of the box and run it. If that is the case you would probably be better off with sticking with magnets. If you find that you don't like cars that are glued to the track you can always reduce the amount of downforce as I mentioned earlier.
Here is an article on tuning cars for non-magnet racing: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzLR42 ... sp=sharing

[waaytoomuchintothis]

Maybe the proof of "enjoy them anyway you can. There is no wrong way." is that I agree with everything that has been said. I will say that I dislike magnets for the unnatural way they make the car run around like its on rails. I pretty much always run on wood. The boxes of plastic track I have haven't been opened since Scalextric Sport was brand new, whatever that was, maybe a decade?

[Austin]

I have Scalextic sport track. Have run with and without magnets. If you want to run the cars in there stock form without adding upgrades run with the magnets. If you love to work on and buy after macket parts then no magnet is a lot of fun. Just try both and you all love it.

[slothead]

I got back into slot car racing about 12 years ago with a Scalextric 1/32 set to have fun with my grandsons. The cars had magnets and were wicked fast (as we say in Maine). My grandsons had a ton of fun racing as fast as could be till the cars rocketed off the track and crashed to the floor. Since I was the one picking them up and making repairs this got tiring quickly and the kids weren't actually learning how to drive slot cars.

Then I build a routed oval track and skill replaced speed as the most important factor, along with building cars that handled well and were fun to drive and race. By age 6 or 7 my youngest grandson could do 100 laps at speed on the oval without crashing - I was very impressed. If driving a slot car without magnets seems impossible or too hard, give it time and you'll be amazed how much fun it is once you become a skilled driver. To me it's kind of like being on a bicycle with or without training wheels.

Tires are the most important upgrade if racing without magnets. Magnets create artificial traction through downforce, without it you have to have good tires.

Slothead

[Slot GT]

[rick42]

I think I get the magnet/no magnet thing now. I bought the car pictured below a few weeks ago. Has 2 extremely small magnets towards the front of the car. Its loud and it kinda chatters and shakes when throttled fairly heavy. Slides all over the track , deslots constantly.I thought man , this is a terrible car. I have never tuned a car in anyway. But I have been reading a lot about it. So , I took this car apart , oiled the axles and greased the gears. Then I trued the tires the best I could. I think they may need a little more sanding. Cleaned my track. Now the car runs quieter , and smoother when throttled. And as far as sliding every where and desolating , I turned the voltage down a bit and I now enjoy driving this car better than any of the heavy magnet cars. I love drifting around the corners , which my heavy magnet cars wont do. I kinda see now that the no magnet thing can be a lot of fun.

[mattb]

I have no idea what kind of car you have, but I bet a set of new tires would make it 50% better. You won't believe how much a good set of tires will do. Either urethane, easy to find online or silicone, you may have to hunt a little harder. I prefer silicone, but that is my 1060's old school coming back!

Lose the magnets, oil it up, add some weight and change the tires.

[borninthe50s]

I really enjoy tuning slot cars to make them run well with no magnets. Some cars need very little help and some cars are practically impossible. A lot depends on the manufacturer and when they were made. It really is sort of an art, and I find that a lot of fun. Just recently, I started putting the magnets back in a lot of my cars so that I could race them with my 4-year-old grandson. What I'm finding is that a car that was really well tuned without magnets, runs really, really great with them back in. Also, I recently bought a Scalextric Javelin based on recommendations from Harry and some of the other members here and I was amazed at how well this car ran with magnets, straight out of the box!

I got started tuning my cars many years ago by reading Harry's reviews and following his suggestions and instructions-- everything from identifying problems with cars when you get them to correcting those problems and more. A lot of times he even gives you suggestions for what aftermarket parts and tires to use as well as where to find them. He is a tremendous resource! And watch out because he will absolutely get you hooked for good!

btw: don't believe the 2012 next to my screen name. I've been reading Harry's reviews and tuning cars almost as long as he's been writing them. bit50s (Glen)

[BARC 1]

Magnets get a bad rap. When done moderately and placed correctly a magnet car can be made to operate much like a no mag car. Some how magnets are looked at like training wheels, yet we think nothing of slipping on Silicones or Urethanes in order to get the cars to stick to the track like a magnet on rails!!!!! :D

[mattb]

Tires and magnets are like apples and oranges!

[BARC 1]

True, but the purpose is the same. One does it a lot better then the other. Don’t get me wrong, I prefer no magnets much the same as the journey across the continent in a car is more pleasing to me than air travel.

The point I am trying to make is we spend a lot of time and far more money trying to get our no mag cars to handle as well and travel as fast as a cheap chassis with a 50 cent magnet. Why do we do this..........because it is fun.

The talk is always about how we like to tune and have our cars slide through corners, and how with a magnet car you have no real feel of the limit, and when the car leaves the track it does so at warp speed, and can almost put a hole in the drywall. Which is true, but you can reposition the magnet and detune a magnet car to perform like a nomag car if you want. Not much is written about this though. Remove some magnets and reposition one more midship, and you can get a magnet car that feels like driving a nomag car, tail wagging and all. Kind of like taking that Apple and painting it orange. Still totally different but much harder to deferentiate