Anyone use the Carrera GO! 1:43 slot car system on their layout rather than 'Streets?

We have the Go! system but not on the train layout. I would suggest looking at this forum:

Slot car illustrated

tons of info on the go system, as well as the digital version which might offer more in the way of controlling turnouts etc. they have pit lanes for example. Also the forum offers advice as to controllers and power supplies which might help in slowing the cars down.

SCX also has a 1:43 scale system which my kids have.  It can the Carrera Go systems are interchangeable.

If you removed the magnets from the cars, you may be able to achieve lower speeds. They also offer digital control systems which may add some precision as well.  I think part of the low speed issue is due to the motor having to overcome the pull of the magnets.  Higher level slot car racing actually removes the magnets completely for racing to really test peoples skills.

Lee the scale is very close to O and they look nice. Carrera has some US carsa but are mostly muscle cars. But the have a nice police and fire car with lights. The other thing to consider is if you want digital or analog. Digital would allow you to run a ghost car. The digital works the same as dcs with constant voltage on track. You can visit Carrerausa.net for tall their products. Also if you use the analog version you can use any other manufactures 1/43 cars. SCX etc. But car choice is limited. But based on what I have seen you do Lee I am sure you will get past that problem and make your own cars..

We saw these recently and were intrigued.  The question I had was if there is a way to put these on "cruise" and just let them work their way around the track/layout without having to juggle an additional controller.  Is that possible?

I've been looking at 1:43 slot cars for some time. Speed is the big problem as they really don't run slower than about 50, so city operation wasn't really practical (although highway is viable). Another manufacturer is Artin who makes some very inexpensive (cheap) entry-level sets you can get for less than $20 at Toys R Us and other places. The cars are plastic "generitypes" but could probably be modified. Again, the slow-speed operation isn't really there.

Hello Lee,

If you put a single rectifier on a CW 80, would the 1/2 wave clipped supply bring the top speed down a bit?  I'm not sure what the spikes would do to motor heating though.

r0d

Here is what I have been working on........

My kids had a big 1/43 scale slot car set. I pulled it out of storage and have been working on using some of it on the layout.  My plan is to cut the track down the center and make a one lane rural road out of it, The track design is such that it will still connect and work this way and it gives me some different radii curves. The vehicles that came with the set were junk....so I have bought some small low geared motors and gear sets and I plan to build 2-3 small 1950's era coal trucks.  In the 70's I built my own slot car chassis so I think I can still can crank out a few chassis. I am designing them to run at close to a full 12 volt but geared to run really slow.  Have not done much on this of late....it's kinda a project I'll pick up after the benchwork is up and trains running.

I will have Super Streets on the layout...but used for only trolleys. I like the slot car solution for rubber tired vehicles.

Thank you for all the replies, information, and interest!  No, it will be a while until I get trucks loading onto flatcars - but that would be cool!

rOdney: I'm not sure what the long-term effects of using a CW-80 on a Carrera or any slot car would be, even when just half wave rectified.  I agree, the 18 volt spikes (slot cars are designed for 12 volts) might eventually overheat them. At least the little cars are cheap (a Crown Vic I found on sale cost $8) so it won't cost a lot to find out, I suppose. 

AMCDave: note that in the Carrera catalog them make some single-lane GO! pieces, including very nice looking mud roads (for off-road slot car racing) that might be perfect for your coal trucks.

Santa Fe VA: I have an "analog" GO! set and have had managed to get the cars to "cruise" to some extent by powering the GO! track an old variable DC supply from my N-gauge days.  ButI have  trouble adjusting speed, because:

- An E-Z street cars runs at between a scale 20 and 90 mph at from around 4 to 18 volts: a one-volt change increases its speed by about 5 to 6 scale mph.  

- A GO! car runs at between 50 mph to 250 scale mph at between 4 and 12 volts.  A one-volt change increases speed by about 25 mph.  I have trouble adjusting power power supply well to get the speed like I want it - it seems to vary voltage in .33 increments only, for about 8 - mph difference each.  I could use the Tekpower regulated DC power supply I have, which permits me to dial in voltage by tenth-volt increments, but . . . 

1:43 slot cars could be an acceptable alternative to 'Streets - not as good in my opinion.  But If 'Streets was not available I think this could be made to work for toy train layouts - although I would maybe try the digital versions, too before deciding.  The biggest challenges or headaches might be:

- the cars actually run on the road surface, which means if you paint it as I do to simulate concrete, asphalt, and dirty road surfaces, the paint will wear and get marred.  Don't know if folks have though about it much, but in 'Streets, nothing even ever touches the plastic road surface - the cars only touch the rails, so when painted the road surface stays the way you paint it.

- the cars aren't nearly as amenable to bashing.  I converted the 1:43 GO! Crown Vic I bought to a diecast (Brooklin) body, and it would hardly move with that in place (it weight six times as much so that is understandable).  The lighter deicast Yat Ming bodies might work well enough, but I think AMCDave has the right idea: you will have to build you own chassis for any non standard cars and particularly for any trucks or buses you want. 

Yes, I have a Scalextric slot car set running through part of my layout with a couple of 1:43 scale cars.  While my fix doesn't solve the speed issue, it will slow them down a bit so they remain stable on the track.  I took an old analog speaker volume controller purchased at Radio Shack, the old type with the round knob that gave you volume increments from 1 through 10, and attached the guts (2 wires)from the scalextric controller to the volume controller and now I have speed increments to control the cars on the tracks......works very well for me.

If any interest, LMK and I'll post a pic

Pete

I've been looking at Carrera D143.   I joined this forum:  http://www.homeracingworld.us/viewforum.php?f=6

Lots of good info and there's several people there building their own custom cars and changing the gearing to slow them down.  I plan on routing my own wood track with copper tape to eliminate the magnets issue.  Right now I'm experimenting by building my 6 year old a race track for his room.  After that I'll build a road on the train layout.

I have the trains running around, over and under my 1/32 wood slot car track.

Click on photos for a larger view.

But have used 1/43 track at model train shows with cars running constantly.

Planned to add some loops around some mini cities when I get the new part of the layout built for cars running constantly.

These wear out pretty fast and stall out so I do not do to many model train shows running the slot cars it takes a lot of work and to much money to wear out several cars over a weekend event.

You can simply skip the slot car controller connection and add in a DC HO / N scale transformer to control the cars can pick used ones up cheap at train meets.

Just need 12 volt DC.

Get a good one or they can bake the engines if not a clean current.

Here are some pics;

1/43 cars got these at NMRA convention in Sacremento they were selling the cars for about $5 each to clear them out had a lot. (should have bought more for parts)

Also look at the track. You can swap on different bodies. There were some plastic model kits 1/43 different cars many years back perhaps you can find.

1/32 track in the basement O trains around, several tracks under neath and a ceiling double track loop and lots of sidings for the passenger sets biggest engines.

As far as running the cars are not slow you would need to tinker with re gearing to get them to run slow but can stall out if they do not get enough contact.

If you use the DC HO transformer you can get them running to a steady speed.

Need to keep the brushes clean

Found some sets at yard sales or clearance cheap so have lots of track.

phillyreading,

Check your e-mail.  Sent you a PDF of K-line manual that was included with their sets.

Larry

Larry,

Thank you! I hope it covers Super Streets track.

Lee Fritz

I am.  It will actually be two short, inexpenive books, one on the basics of setting up track correctly, etc., care for the cars, etc., and how to get the most out of "stock" parts, and the other on bashing and converting the cars, making tractor trailer trucks, etc., and custom modifying track.  It will be a few months, though before it is available.  When it's ready I will become a sponsor here so you will here about them here.

Easton - they do go mighty fast and they are nearly impossible to slow down aren't they?

BTW - I burned out the GO! Mustang in a test-to-failure in only a few hours - I set it to running at about a scale 50 mph at about 3 volts or so with a pure DC power supply around and around a seven foot by four loop and it ran for only about nine hours straight. The motor burned out.  What also surprising me though was that the gears were nearly worn out where they intersect: I doubt they would have lasted more than another few hours themselves.

During the 60's slot car boom Dad and I built a routed track on a sheet of 4x8 3/4" particle board. It was pretty cool....filled the whole 4x8. It allows you to make much more fluid realistic road/track.  Is there a commercial source for the braid to carry the current??? Or are folks using a substitute?   

Just to add to the mix:  Aurora made a 1/48 slot car line in the mid to late 60's. Didn't last long, just a year or so. I had the Aurora Thunderjet 500 H0 line back then, but couldn't afford to upgrade. I've only seen them once, since - at York - years ago.

If there is a mini gear drive that would fit the rear wheels to a good quality motor ??? thinking HO scale model train stuff

Then perhaps a slot car set could work.

As in the pics posted above as you can see the tiny motor to the plastic gear is not designed to last very long.

That's not encouraging. That would only cover a single open house weekend at best.

Well, one of the Crown Vics has been going more than twelvy hours now, although not all at once: 8 hours yesterday, 4 more this morning so far.  My wife is getting irked with me though, so I am not sure how long the test can continue - she doesn't like the thing taking up the space in a spare room floor down the hall or the sound, which isn't that loud but it continuous, going around and around and around . . . 

Anyway, sometimes a thing made for rather intermitant use (a slot car being made to race very fast for rather short periods each time) will wear out quickly if pushed into continuous duty.  That is what I am concerned about and what I am testing.   Years ago one of the car mags - can't remember if it was Motor Trend, C&D or R&T, tested a set of tires driven continuously in a 100 foot circle at a speed that generated mild cornering force - something around half what the car could do,  like .4 G.  I remember the tires wore out completely in only a few hundred miles . . . they got hot and the rubber just wore off them.  I think slot cars running contiuously might be the same sort of thing.  

Didn't think about that. You're probably right. If slot cars were to be used on a layout, one option would be staging them so that they'd take a few laps, then park. Would require some clever track work and programming, but feasible.

http://www.oldslotracer.com/

Anyone thinking of adding a track to your layout and do not want to buy track it is pretty easy to make your own.

Take a look at the link with how to and lots of examples.

For the GO sets and even Artrin I have had good success with running them not non stop but have cars that have lasted a few years with occasional racing use.

You can get the digital cars that you can switch lanes with;

http://www.carrera-toys.com/en/products/digital-143/

The regular GO cars;

http://www.carrera-toys.com/en/products/go/

I finally got around to adding a "Carrera Go!!!" brand slot oval around the perimeter of my 4x8 layout to increase fun factor for visitors (and me).  Carrera Go!!! 1:43 slot cars are a perfect size match for the diecast vehicles which come on MTH auto transports.  I posted a short video, link below.  Carrera cars are very fast, they kept flying off the supplied radius one (R1) curves, so I had to buy four corners of R3 curves.  They are approximate to O36 fastrack, the outer edge of the Carrera diameter being about 36 inches.  Even still, the Carrera cars are fast so I added in half straight pieces to alternate with R3 curves.  That increased the curve diameter to about 54 inches and the cars seem to do better.  There is nothing more annoying than a slot car flying off the curve at the back of a layout.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7Wb_2kcpZo

Do many people routinely run their layout for more than 8hrs straight?   To me it seems that torture testing might be more than what is necessary?

The idea is to compare durability, sort of like the torture tests GM, Ford, etc. do at the proving ground where they drive a car straight through for 1000 hours, etc.  I ran both the WBB sedan and van, and several Carrera slot cars as continuously as I could around a loop for hours on end.  The WBB just run forever and ever - I have to clean their rollers and wheels about ever eight hours of running but that is it: I think in particlar the van probably has a lifetime measured in thousands of hours.

As I said above one slot car burned its motors - I had ti going around in a circle ad it was having to work -- normally they go around curves and then hit straights, etc.  And they all needed the brushes cleaned and straightened if not extended every four hours or so.

 After a total of maybe 24 hours I too them apart and examined them closely.  The slot cars had visibly worn gears - they are not going to have a long, long life in toy-train layout service, and the motor was hot in one of them that I took apart right after lifting it up off the trac - never seen that in a "Streets.  I could see no sign of wear on the WBB critters - looked perfect.  

By the way, I am not saying the 'streets cars are better than Carrera slot cars, but they do seem better when you want to run cars for continuously, as on a toy train layout, whether than is for thirty minutes or, like me, an entire afternoon.  I imagine 'Streets vehicles would make pretty lousy race cars compared to Carrera, if it came to that.  Itst not just that they only go about a third the speed (scale 90+ mph to speed compared to 300!) -- the impressive thing about slot cars is that they weigh nothing, getting their traction from a type of magnetraction, so when they leave the road, they bounce sort of like a balloon almost, with no damage.  That strikes me as brilliant engineering: design them to do well the thing that is probably going to be what they do very often.

Check our web site, we sell the full Carrera line of GO, 1/32 and 1/24th cars and sets

In April 2000 OGRR a guy set HO track in a road he made and used HO diesel motor adapted to a car. This sounds like a good idea to me.

That was Joe Rampola. He used H.O. power trucks to drive the vehicles. A lot of work, but impressive results.

I played with something similar - at one time I was close to using HO power units for the trucks on my country road: I had a test layout and a good diesel chassis could be hidden under the trailer on a tractor trailer and powerrun the truck well.  I had built and tested about twelve feet of "road."  

But . . .   Like everything, you can get nearly anything to work if you put enough creativity, effort, and money into it.  The problem I saw is that I was starting out with something that would require creativity, tailoring and custom work just to get working, period, whereas if I used slot cars (not ideal but better) or 'Streets (not perfect, but the best so far) I would be starting out with something that ran cars and trucks and therefore I could spend more time on customization, etc.  

But when you get right down to it, it does not matter than much, and here, bizarrely, is why.  When you get right down to it, 'Streets is on my layout not as much to give me cars and trucks that operate, as to create project work and challenging modeling work for me to do.  Any of these options, 'Streets, HO, slot cars, or modifying the Faller car system to O gauge, for that matter, would provide more than enough projects for me to work on and i would be, in some way, satisfied with the challenges and just about as happy.  

But I don't have regrets with 'Streets.  It's a cool system.

I plan on trying slot car track for a road on my layout. But I will build the cars and trucks myself from commercial components. I have bought a few gearhead motors that at 12 volts have a low RPM. The high voltage will help with the 'stalling' you can get with slot cars and the low RPM will make my coal trucks run at a very slow speed.....as they should in 1950's rural WV.

I built my own 1/24 slot cars back in the 1960's with fewer skills than I have today....so I think I can make it work....just busy with other things right now.

I think if you are committed to building you own vehicles, there is every reason to expect you will get good results with slots cars.  You can gear them right and built them to run at 12 V (or even higher - just use model train motors and go to 16 - 22 V) you won't have much stalling.  

One thing to thing about.  With 'Streets, the road pieces are all single lane and I have learned to separate opposing lanes of traffic on a two lane road by at least 1/2 inch in order to get sufficient clearance for big trucks.  It is actually even a problem with stock SuperStreets vehicles, if two step vans pass each other in opposite nested lanes they both loose all their outside mirrors as they pass).  Anyway, I put a spacer between lanes.  But since slot car track is normally two lane, you can't.  I'd suggest looking at a bigger scale than 1:43 for you roads, using 1:32 or even 1:24 track so that you get wider lanes.  Since you are building your own vehicles, you can make it work fine with scratch built vehciles that loo about 1:43 or 1:48 scale but run on that trac

Thanks for that info Lee.......

PLANS are that the road will have a single lane that operates. This will be in a rural area of the layout. My vision is for a slow coal truck navigating a country road that runs in and around the rail line.....recreating childhood memories.   In my mind I have even thought about a auto following the truck, unable to pass, that would be a light weight model towed by the truck via clear fishing line but having a guide pin of it's own.

Oh the plans....all I need is time!!

One thing about slot cars and car race tracks . . . at least they have a reason for going around in circles!

Oh, that is cool.  You are probably aware the Carrera GO! makes a single lane  country dirt road?  They call it Rallye track.  I guess they use if for off-road slot car racing.  

Yeah, my 'Streets cars go around in loops for hours.  They travel down main street, turn into a tunnel and turn around under a hill where you can't see them, then come back the other lane going the other way.  I sometimes leave them for hours. Nobody's racing, but sometimes one car will slowly catch up to another. 

I built a 4 lane Carrera Go 1/43 scale slot car track that I recently took to a local train show and was mobbed by the kids. They wanted the hands-on experience. I plan to integrate the car track (not necessarily the same layout) into a train layout that features a cityscape involving a grand prix race, although I would prefer to have street cars offered by Carrera on the track (i.e., Mustang's, Camaro's) to the formula one cars. By using a HO DC variable 0-17 V transformer I can set the car remote to on by securing the trigger and control the speed with the variable output transformer. I ran the track for seven hours and had no trouble with the cars or transformer, although I did switch them out regularly and let the power supply cool for 20 minutes. Worked well enough for me and I like the hands-on aspect. I look forward to getting a train/ car setup laid out. 

I have a TON of ARTIN track that my son collected over the years he no longer wants. I plan to cut the sections down the middle into single lanes. The track joiners allow it to work as a single. The track has two radii so if I cut it I will have 4 different radii curves and it's kind thin so it will bend up and down. Like I said.....plans.....

Not connected to model railroading at all but I thought I'd mention it. At the big church I go to they had a car show and a guy built a 4 lane HO slot car track for kids to run. I watched awhile and it seemed reliable. The kids that were good could run the cars dizzying fast.