Simple Ways to Pimp Your Scalextric Cars

Scalextric Chatsworth Land Speed Record

Racing Scalextric cars is growing in popularity as each new generation discovers the fun and excitement of slot car racing. Scalextric enthusiasts soon start to look for ways to enhance the performance of their cars and systems. Here are just a few simple tweaks that will help make your cars fly around the track.

The same principles apply to slot cars as well as 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 Scalextric cars use tiny electric motors, not super enhanced petrol engines, and these are easy to change. You can find some remarkable, high perfornance Scalextric motors that provide higher revs and higher speeds. A motro upgrade will give you an instant speed improvement.

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. Many modern cars come fitted with these magnets but you might like to upgrade to a stronger magnet to help your car stick to the track.

The next improvement you might like to make to your car is new tires. Better grip with the track will help your car to fly around the track.

So your Scalextric car is fully pimped and ready to break the world land speed record. The next thing to consider is the track itself? There are a few simple enhancement that can make all the difference. I recommend that you first try this enhancements on one of your two lanes so that you can compare the difference with the unmodified track.

Start by cleaning the Scalextric track. Dirt, dust and moisture on the track will inevitably result in low friction and maybe even some wheel spin. And the next thing to do is to clean dust and debris from your slot. The slots in your track will inevitabley gather dust and dirt. This will obviously slow the progress of your car. Ensuring your slots are free from dust and debris will bring significant performance improvements.

Don't overlook your electrical system as ensuring all your connections are as good as they can be will bring performance enhancements. Clean all the contacts and make sure the connectors on your car are ultra clean.

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