Author Topic: Scaletrix Tron crossover  (Read 2866 times)

Scaletrix Tron crossover
« on: 22 November, 2018, 09:38:12 pm »
European slot car championships. Blimey that's ridiculously fast.

https://youtu.be/GtwkRd6zHwg

No idea how they even begin to control them at that speed.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

simonp

Re: Scaletrix Tron crossover
« Reply #1 on: 22 November, 2018, 09:55:17 pm »
That's insane!

Manotea

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Re: Scaletrix Tron crossover
« Reply #2 on: 22 November, 2018, 11:12:06 pm »
Not a very diverse crowd! :)

(I though the ads for scalectric kits at the bottom of the page were a bit optimistic!)

Re: Scaletrix Tron crossover
« Reply #3 on: 22 November, 2018, 11:25:31 pm »
My uncles were into that kind of thing, about 50 years ago. One uncle had a track (self-built of course) in an attic room in my grandparents' house. His (also self-built) cars were way faster than Scalextric, though not quite fast as in the video! He gave my brother and me one each for our Airfix (like Scalextric, but with slightly less-good electrical connections) track, but only after taking out the motors and putting in slower ones.

We were allowed some goes on his track when we visited. My sister still complains, even now, that she got banned for failing to grasp the idea of slowing down at corners, and nearly embedding a car in the wall of the room ;D

Cudzoziemiec

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Re: Scaletrix Tron crossover
« Reply #4 on: 23 November, 2018, 08:57:02 am »
Like audax with electronics. I think Kim could win a prize for turning up while female!

Actually it doesn't look fun to me. What's the point of scalextrix you can't see? Maybe that's the equivalent of your great aunt Agatha saying "What's the point of this music when you can hear the words?" but so be it.
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Re: Scaletrix Tron crossover
« Reply #5 on: 23 November, 2018, 09:26:21 am »
Actually it doesn't look fun to me. What's the point of scalextrix you can't see? Maybe that's the equivalent of your great aunt Agatha saying "What's the point of this music when you can hear the words?" but so be it.

I'm with you on that. I suspect with these guys the actual racing has become incidental to building the fastest car. Looking at them it didn't look like their trigger fingers were moving and the cars were on max all the time.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

ian

Re: Scaletrix Tron crossover
« Reply #6 on: 23 November, 2018, 09:31:57 am »
I used to have this 'Aurora' (?) car racing thing. Those little cars were mental. I once hit my sister so hard in the head with an inadvertently launched car that she cried for about an entire week. You made the cars perform better by weighting them down with bits of from the stuff that sealed bottles of Blue Nun (cos we're class – Black Tower would have been OK, Mateus Rose, not sure). I had a set of racing cars and also some police cars and a truck for handy state line contraband chases. This ain't Alabama no more, boy. Many happy hours in the heady presence of ozone.

Torslanda

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Re: Scaletrix Tron crossover
« Reply #7 on: 23 November, 2018, 10:52:48 am »
There used to be a thing called 'magnatraction' IIRC. Involved magnets under the cars used to keep them centred on the steel conducted strips in the track.

My guess is those cars have neodymium magnets under them.

Anybody else wondering where the fun was...?
VELOMANCER

Well that's the more blunt way of putting it but as usual he's dead right.

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Re: Scaletrix Tron crossover
« Reply #8 on: 23 November, 2018, 03:41:02 pm »
Like audax with electronics. I think Kim could win a prize for turning up while female!

Risk of that being because all the other contestants ran away, thobut...


While the brush-fettling to racing time ratio was always suboptimally high, it's not proper Scalextric racing unless there's a cat hiding behind the banked curve waiting to pounce on whoever takes the lead too early.

ian

Re: Scaletrix Tron crossover
« Reply #9 on: 23 November, 2018, 04:28:32 pm »
I can't help but think that most motorsports would be improved by a giant cat hiding somewhere near the circuit.

Chris S

Re: Scaletrix Tron crossover
« Reply #10 on: 23 November, 2018, 05:45:32 pm »
I can't help but think that most motorsports would be improved by a giant cat hiding somewhere near the circuit.

Which reminds me of my all time favourite sport commentary, whilst watching the Men's parallel slalom snowboarding:

"The only way this would be more dangerous is if you gave them swords."

rogerzilla

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Re: Scaletrix Tron crossover
« Reply #11 on: 23 November, 2018, 09:48:47 pm »
Either magnets are involved, or the cars are going fast enough (scale speed must be 1000 mph) that they generate massive downforce.
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Mr Larrington

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Re: Scaletrix Tron crossover
« Reply #12 on: 24 November, 2018, 05:11:36 am »
ISTR March made quite a lot of money licensing the design of their notably rubbish "2-4-0" F1 car to Scalextric.  With twice as much rubber at the back it was less prone to flying off the track than the four-wheeled opposition.
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Chris S

Re: Scaletrix Tron crossover
« Reply #13 on: 24 November, 2018, 06:19:41 pm »
Either magnets are involved, or the cars are going fast enough (scale speed must be 1000 mph) that they generate massive downforce.

As a once owner of a lot of Scalextric, I can say with some authority that it's quite possible to launch a car quite some distance if you misjudge a corner. Those things in the video would take your face off if it left the track and you copped it.

Re: Scaletrix Tron crossover
« Reply #14 on: 24 November, 2018, 06:55:26 pm »
I don't think there's any speed variations as the cars are going round the track. The players are just setting one speed that's just fast enough to avoid the cars coming off the track.

That's my guess anyway.

Also, in real life the cars wouldn't appear as fast as in a video.

rogerzilla

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Re: Scaletrix Tron crossover
« Reply #15 on: 24 November, 2018, 08:25:15 pm »
Googling, the fastest cars are "wing cars" which do have a lot of downforce.  Normal slot cars have no real aerodynamics as they're too small amd the prototypical shapes don't work at scale size.

If you google "slot wing car" images you can see how they get the downforce.
Hard work sometimes pays off in the end, but laziness ALWAYS pays off NOW.

Re: Scalextric Tron crossover
« Reply #16 on: 24 November, 2018, 09:18:01 pm »
Basically, a narrow version of the rear wing off a Formula One car, then.

Either magnets are involved, or the cars are going fast enough (scale speed must be 1000 mph) that they generate massive downforce.

Given what the page quoted below is saying, you slightly underestimated the lower end of the scale speed:

Quote
Known as wing cars, they race on a 1:24 scale track that has steep banks and runs approximately 47 m (155 ft) long by eight lanes wide.

The wing cars can hit speeds of 80-160 km/h (50 - 100 mph) clocking lap times from 1.5 to 3.0 seconds. 0-100 km/h (62 mph) takes less than 0.3 seconds while the tuned electric motors are calculated to rev up to 300,000 RPM at 16 volts!
https://www.motor1.com/news/29368/competition-slot-cars-go-0-62-mph-in-less-than-03-seconds-video/

A 1:24 scale slot car circulating round a track at 50-100 mph equates to a full-size car doing 1,200-2,400 mph - that's 1.58-3.15 times the speed of sound at sea level. Mind you, the visual effect in the video suggests that they are travelling and scale speeds closer to plaid.

At 1:24 scale, the acceleration figure of 0-62 mph in 0.3 seconds equates to 0-1488 mph in 0.3 seconds, or 226.1g

To put the performance of slot wing cars into perspective, Bloodhound SSC is designed to reach "only" 1,050 mph, and although some racing drivers have survived massive g-loads*, anything over 50g is likely to cause death or serious injury.

* David Purley (best known for his attempts to save Roger Williamson at the 1973 Dutch GP) survived an estimated 178g when the throttle of his car stuck open and he hit a wall at Brands Hatch Silverstone in 1977 and Kenny Bräck survived an IndyCar crash in 2003 in which an impact of 214g was recorded.
"He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." ~ Freidrich Neitzsche

Mr Larrington

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Re: Scaletrix Tron crossover
« Reply #17 on: 25 November, 2018, 09:44:56 pm »
A pedant writes: Purley's crash was at Silverstone, on a weekend notable also for the debuts of Gilles Villeneuve and the turbocharged Renault RS01.
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Re: Scalextric Tron crossover
« Reply #18 on: 25 November, 2018, 09:49:09 pm »
Oopsie. Duly amended.
"He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." ~ Freidrich Neitzsche

mattc

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Re: Scaletrix Tron crossover
« Reply #19 on: 26 November, 2018, 12:47:09 pm »
Best Youtuber comment:

"Are these people okay?"
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rogerzilla

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Re: Scaletrix Tron crossover
« Reply #20 on: 26 November, 2018, 01:19:15 pm »
Somewhere, a wing car enthusiast is adding the same comment to one of ESL's videos of LEL.
Hard work sometimes pays off in the end, but laziness ALWAYS pays off NOW.