Noisy Carrera 124 cars

[Fourshipp]

These are our first 124 cars from Carrera. They are much noisier than the 132 cars. It sounds like gear noise to me. Is this normal? If not, what needs to be done to smooth out the drive train?

thanks,

Bruce

[32lbking]

I can't see your video, but I can tell you that the noise is not uncommon. I have around 50 D/124 cars and some are louder than others.
I am not sure what material the spur gears are made of [some strange plastic, delrin... don't know]. Seems like I remember seeing this material in older tube televisions and radios back in the day.
I have had a couple that the gear mesh seemed a little tight, and I enlarged the motor screw holes in the motor pod with a small round file and moved the motor away from the spur a little using paper as a shim between the motor and rear of the pod. It will only get you about a couple thousandths but it helped loosen the gear mesh slightly. That may not be whats causing your noise though.
I plan on trying to run in the gears on a couple cars with some toothpaste or rubbing compound and see if that helps.
Make sure all of your screws are tight. I don't know if you have had one of the D/124 cars apart, but the cars are overbuilt. After you remove the body there are six screws plus 2 motor screws that hold the motor/pod/axle assembly together with the chassis.
Also, be sure you don't have an out of round tire or wheel causing vibration. Like I said I can't see your video so I'm not sure what your car sounds like. I don't run my 1/32 cars much anymore so I can't tell you the difference in sound right off the bat.
Randy

[RichD]

Try posting the video on YouTube.

[Eric P]

I can second what Randy said, check the gear lash and adjust as needed. Additionally, a nice set of trued urethane tires on the front will quieten them down. The 124 cars roll on all four corners, so the smoother they are, the smoother the car will be.

[Fourshipp]

Thanks. As for the videos, they are posted on Vimeo. I can see them in the post on my iPad.

Can anyone see them them besides me? If you can please let me know. Still trying to figure out the video posting thing.

thank you.

Bruce

[Fourshipp]

Ok, I went to Vimeo and changed the settings to public. Please try again.

thanks,

Bruce

[GT40 Racer (DM)]

Hi Bruce I could see the video. The car sounded ok to me - maybe post a comparison of a 1/32 car so we can see how much noisier it is. One thing about the 1/24 cars is with the greater mass they do rumble along. We run them mostly on timber tracks I would say they are noisier than the 1/32 but I always put that down to them being bigger I haven't really seen it as an issue. On one of our tracks we have 5 lanes when you have the 5 cars side by side coming down the long straight it almost feels like the track is shaking.

[Slotspeed]

I can see the video, I am using firefox as a browser on a Mac. The whine sounds like the gears might be a bit tightly meshed, but I have also seen other videos of D124 cars with very noisy drivetrains. Wonder if you could adjust the mesh if it is a bit tight. I don't have any Carrera 124 cars, all I have is a mechanical background in a previous life as well as RC and 1/32 experience. I use a bit of slot.it plastic grease on my 1/32 cars btw. Plus have used a bit of toothpaste to help bed in noisy gears on occasion.

Cheers,
Steve.

[dw5555]

That sounds definitely like gear mesh. Do the rear tires move smoothly or is there some effort to spin them?

[Fourshipp]

Yes Dave, I think the tires are tight to move by hand compared to the 132 cars. I bought 5 of these lightly used here on HRW and they all have the same feel and noise. I don’t mind the noise, I just don’t want to tear anything up.

please forgive my weak search skills, but can anyone link me to a Carrera 124 tuning thread?

We got two cars running last night (tires trued, gear train and axles lubes, and basic tuning...what I know to do) and the 124 cars are a blast going side by side in the turns. We are running just the front magnet, rear mag removed, same as we run the 132 cars.

Thanks for the info.

Bruce

[WB2]

Here’s one tuning video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sK1nvt1FXsg
There’s also German guy that has a lot of tuning videos on Carrera cars but I can’t find it at this time.
You might also try www.freeslotter.de . It’s a German site with a separate Carrera forum. Use Google Chrome and you get an automatic translation fron German to English.

[BRS Hobbies]

I would also check to see if the any of the wiring isn't rubbing up against one of the axles. Sometimes you need to push it out of the way before you put the body back on.

[Fourshipp]

Thanks for the suggestions. Half the fleet has been tuned: Bondo on wheel dents, wheels trued, front stock tires trued and sealed, PG urethanes trued, Motors broke in as per Cincy Slots videos, and chassis trued on trim plate. Also opened up motor mount a bit and gear noise is virtually gone. Running
front mag only. Fast laps started in the 6.4 range and are now down to 5.76. With the power reduced to a more comfortable and consistent setting (60% on CU) we are averaging 6.4-6.5 on all the cars with 20 volts on the power supply. I’m really enjoying the larger cars. We’ve only run two up with a ghost car and will have our first124 race night this week. I’ll let you know how that goes.

we’ll play with magless set ups next.

[dinglebery]

Did I read that right... you're running Carrera 1/24 cars on 20V...? and lowering the power on the Cu to 60%...? Why not run them at suggested 18V?

[Eric P]

We use urethane tires too and keep the front magnet. That works good on both the unpainted plastic and wood track

[CarlosInSeattle]

These are our first 124 cars from Carrera. They are much noisier than the 132 cars. It sounds like gear noise to me. Is this normal? If not, what needs to be done to smooth out the drive train?

thanks,

Bruce

That's a lot of gear whine. Most likely that car was used quite a bit or has an aftermarket pinion installed. The D124 cars are definitely louder than pretty much any 1/32 car but that sound more high pitched than normal. The pinion is brass and the spur gear is delrin, and delrin's downside is gear noise. You can use some Labelle 106 gear lube with PTFE to reduce the noise. The PTFE is what causes the grease to stick to the delrin spur gear, most lubricants will fly off.