Looking for car suggestions

[Bal r 14]

I have a routed, 3 lanes, 44' track. I have been buying cars for about 2 months and would like to add a few more. So far, I have 7 Scalextric, 3 Carrera, 1 Pioneer and 3 NSR cars.

Scalextric: wires are undersized and break easy, I have 3 cars that I have had to discard because there wasn't enough good wire to solder to the blade pickup from the resister. I have problems getting the wheels and tires true. You don't know what you are getting when you buy a Scalextric car. Some cars handle and perform great, others do not. Some have decent tires, some are just awful. Wheel and tires sizes are all over the place, too. The best performing Scalextric car I have is the Back to the Future DeLorean. The worst are the F1 cars; just the opposite of what I would have expected. Consequently, I am really unsure about buying any more Scalextric cars.

Carrera: Generally the Scalextric cars will out-perform them. They could also use better tires. They seem to have much fewer wheel and tires sizes, too. Aside from that, they handle well and are better built. Their blade assemblies are complicated but they hold the slot well and are durable. Wiring seems a lot more robust. I am not sure I will buy more Carrera cars. I might if I see one I like. But, more performance would be nice.

Pioneer: Only one is the General Lee, which is a collector that my son bought. So, I haven't done much with it. It seems to perform very much like some Scalextric cars. But, it appears to be better quality. Selection is poor, though.

NSR: They really perform and handle. Especially the angle-winder Pink Pig. I have broken pieces off bodies. I don't know if that's because the bodies are more brittle or just because they are going faster. Motors, bearings, wheels, wiring and overall quality are very nice and simple. About the only bad things are they are expensive and wear tires quickly. I would buy more, but selection is limited.

I have been looking at Fly, Slot.it and Sideways cars. I would appreciate any suggestions or comments.

[lance]

Is your track painted? Latex paint is what most tracks are painted with.

You should try Slot it and sideways. Quality cars, most handle well, many parts available. Slot it parts are the most frequently used replacement parts and better parts to modify most cars. Group C cars handle great.
If you dont want to fix issues with cars, Fly might not be for you. They need some tuning and maybe some parts to get running decent. They have great detail and that is why many like them.

Scaly cars do have thin wires but always repairable (I hope by discarding, you mean just set aside). Either by replacing the thin wire, removing the thin wire of not using a the digital feature, or adding a Bnova type guide part and putting a conventional guide on it. CG s making these now since Bnova is not.
When you purchase a car with plastic wheels, there may be times when the wheels may be out or round or not true. Truing the wheels and tires will help handline and running of any car.

Carrera cars, for some reason is set up to run on 14.8volt (see the label on the box), so the do run slower than scaly. They are also much heavier.

Pioneer cars are much like scaly.

Nsr is a racing type of slot car (Italy) and light bodies and fast speeds, they may break items. speed control is key. replacement parts available, body parts may be tougher.

Tires are always subjective. sometimes tires are good, some look good, but dont hook up, some are bad and either hard or soft and gummy. Rubber, Urethane and silicon are the replacement tires. Rubber and urethane can be run together, if you choose silicon, best to go silicon on all the cars. if you run rubber or urethane on a track that has been run with silicon, the rubber or urethane tires slide around.

Most people get a group of like cars so they can have even match races. scaly transam cars as a class, slot it GP C as a class, carrera DTM as a class.

[Atitagain]

Nice concise and to the point response lance. Wal r 14, before I left slot cars for a hiatus, I had over 100 slot cars. I, like you ,bought most brands at first. Mostly because I liked a particular car. After a few years I settled on two brands, Slot.it and NSR simply because they performed the best. I liked the Group C cars from Slot.it but in all honesty if NSR would have made Group C I probably would have just bought NSR. Our club ran many classes of cars. Trans Am was very popular and at the time, Scalextric was the go to Trans Am car and then Pioneer became a player. My point is, depending on your eventual involvement in slot cars will most likely dictate the type of cars you buy. Have fun.

[chappyman66]

Different cars from different companies take different work to run well. As with any hobby, some people like working on the cars while others prefer performance out of the box.

Lance's points are valid. On a routed track,I would say that tires (generally changing them) and wheels (generally truing them) are the most basic work/upgrades. I would also say that this has been the case since the 60s so while you can spend a ton of money on gadgets and parts you don't have to do so if all you want is a good running home car. A sanding block works well for wheels and tires and is cheap.

There is lots of good tuning advice available once you remove the body.

Slot.It, Sideways are good. NSR cars are fast as well. But all cars will eventually require maintenance.

[Pappy]

I like NSR, Slot It and Racer/Sideways. But to get them running good they all need to be modified. Sidewinder is my favorite motor set-up. NSR sells their cars with sidewinder motor pods, as far as I know the others don't. So you have to spent more money to get them up to speed. You'll have to buy a motor pod, motor, gears, usually wheels and tires, wood guide flag and I always replace my lead wires with Slot Car Corner lead wire, it doesn't break.

If you want a good handling, stable, reliable car you can't go wrong with a Slot It Porsche GT1 in a sidewinder configuration. There are cars you can get to go faster but are not as stable, reliable and easy to drive as the Porsche GT1. In my humble opinion.

[Atitagain]

I agree with you Pappy. Slot.it and NSR do need to be tuned. But unlike other companies slot cars, they provide the means to set up a good running car by providing motor pods, adjustable front axle height, just to name two. Since my return, I see new slot car companies (new to me) that are now providing similar set-up options and I'm very happy to see this.

[Bal r 14]

Thanks for the replies. In response, I have a few remarks:

I work on my cars constantly. I believe I have every car functioning as well as possible, except for some Scalextric models that I can't seem to get the wheels true. I have got other Scalextric cars and all others working just as smooth as glass, zero hopping or shudder.

The 3 Scalextric cars I "retired" are F1 cars that have the blade located between the wheels. The geometry of that configuration makes them attempt to swap ends very easily and puts a lot of stress on the blade assembly and wires, which are about the width of a hair. I have worked on the blade assembly and resoldered wires several times. Just ran out of wire and don't see how to stop the cause.

I have bought a number of different types of tires and experiment regularly with what works best on my track. I am always buying tires.

I have tried to have groups of cars that compete well with each other. I have 3 Carrera DTM cars and I love how they compete with each other. Unfortunately, others do not share my views. We seem to be gravitating toward more NSR cars, like it or not. To a large degree, NSR cars remind me of the 1/24th vacuum formed body, brass or aluminum framed cars with rewound motors and sponge tires we used to run in the 70s. They performed ridiculously well, but lacked realism. I didn't want to go back to that. I would like a brand that represents a happy medium that others will appreciate, too.

I should mention, other family members are enjoying my track as well and had purchased a number of their own cars, mostly Scalextric. We were able to run a number of these cars together that were very competitive. But, they are now buying NSR cars. I kind of have to "go with the flow" if I want others to play.

One last thing I should mention is this track is difficult to drive because it has lots of challenging curves.

[Ragtopman]

Great suggestions here but I would not leave out one of, if not, the best of the plastic chassis cars, Thunderslots. Comes with great and easy to true tires and doesn’t need not much of anything to run and handle great!
Also, one of my other favorite is the Revoslot cars. They have a metal chassis so a bit heavier but the quality is 2nd to none. The bodies are works of art, pretty amazing to look at! They really don’t need any tuning and run amazing right out of the box and I mean right out of the box. Excellent tires as well just need to true them but I find them a bit harder to true than the Thunderslot tires. All the brands mentioned here are great in their own way tho. Good luck and have fun!

[Atitagain]

I have my first Revoslot coming in today's mail. I'm really looking forward to looking this car over due to the fact I've never owned one.

[Bal r 14]

Just in case anyone is interested, here is the track layout. We have found the blue lane has a huge advantage over the others, particularly with NSR cars. So the area to the right of the yellow line is being added to disadvantage blue and even things out.

[docdoom]

Have you tryed just swapping out the guild and wire and going with sloting plus guild.

https://slotcarcorner.com/collections/1-32-guide-adapters/products/cgga004-cg-slotcars

https://slotcarcorner.com/collections/1-32-guides/products/sp101001-sloting-plus

[Atitagain]

Interesting, I would have thought your Green lane would have the advantage.

[Norman]

What voltage is your track running at?
When I raced 10 volts was about normal.

You can also add weight to your cars to help handling.

[Bal r 14]

I am running the track at 10.5 volts. The green lane does look like it has an advantage. But, the image shown has the planned expansion. In current configuration, the blue lane has the outside on two long sweeping curves at both ends of the long straight and can really fly. It also has inside position at the main pinch point and can easily knock the other cars off the track. Thus is a pretty good look at the layout of the existing configuration. I am still working on some design tweaks to help the red lane. If I can help red, hurt blue and keep green the way it is, I will be happy.

[Bal r 14]

An FYI update: I picked up cars from Ninco, Fly and Sideways as well as 2 more NSRs (one angle winder and one side winder). The NSR angle winders are very hard to match! The Sideways angle winder handles very well, but no match for the NSR. I also observe that Carrera cars work much better at 14v - 15v. However, the front tires do not allow the pickup blade to get very deep in the slot. That may work OK on a plastic track, but not on this one. If I take the front tires off they stay in the slot much better, but lose some stability. If I can find a way to lower the pickup blade 1/8" or raise the front wheels, they should be pretty much fun to race together.

Back in the 70s, I made my own frames from brass rod. I think I may do that for some of these Scalextric cars.

[dinglebery]

Carrera cars are considered toys - they're heavy and built like tanks. NSR cars are built for racing - light and excellent build quality. I have one of about every make, but what I find I run most often are the Slot.it, Fly (including GBTrack and Trucks), Scalextric Sport, Sideways and RevoSlot. You really can't go wrong with any if you're capable of tweaking and lubing them to run better. Have Fun!