Maybe try raising the car just a touch with tire height to .450. Play with the brush tension, assuming the brushes are in good shape. Also gearing may help. Make sure nothing is binding.
#1 Your independent front end. Take your axle and get some polishing compound, or jewelers rouge. Dip the axle in it and chuck the axle up in a dremel tool. At a reasonable speed run it in and out of the axle hole a few times. When you are done with this put a retainer on the end and dip the retainer in the rouge. Spin the retainer lightly in a clean rag. A bit meticulous yes but nothing can be too smooth!
The Quickers are usually red, blue or yellow, the back is kind of rounded toward the front. On tracks were translucent and had holes drilled in the back. They will both mesh well with the predator pinion, but you can do better! Option #1 get a pro predator pinion, and the new super tough 22 gear! It is what I have just this week completely changed over to having all my cars geared with this combo. Not necessarily that ratio, but those gears. With a little tinkering and break in you can not get a finer gear mesh. If you want to keep the crown you are currently using, I recommend trying a Tomy pinion. The Tomy's mesh well with both the quicker and the On Track.
Back to the jewelers rouge! Take a small paint brush, I like to use those disposable micro brushes and smear the rouge into the gears, put the car on a break in box, and re coat them every 30 sec or so. It won't take but a minute or two and you will hear the gears smooth out dramatically.
I do a lot of playing around with the pick up shoes as well. Make sure they are riding flat on the rails! Also make sure that when you push up on the heel with your finger the crimp on the back of the shoe that engages the brush tube doesn't tangle in the pickup spring! Some guys like to crimp down on that so they don't come off the brush tubes at all. I prefer clamped on for continuous rail tracks and "free floating" for plastic track.
My best advice: Run the crap out of it! A very strange thing happened at the ECC race. As the race progressed, several cars got sudden increases in speed. After talking to several MARC racers who run on many Max Tracks with LOTS of down force, we came to the conclusion that the added down force was helping the cars get broken in at a much faster rate. Hence the post from Exnavy. Make sure everything is clean, lubed, and broken in. The more you race it, the faster they get. I've used Arm & Hammer Baking Soda toothpaste before. One of the little travel size tubes.
If both white mags, motor and traction, are on the passenger side it's the high downforce setup. Switching the white traction mag to the drivers side gives you the low downforce setup.
This works particularly well on the MaxTrax because it's got so much rail to work with that the high downforce actually slows your car at least in SS.
White to white is high down force, black to white is low. And yes in my opinion this will have an effect on the motor. I suggest to pick which way you want to build the car and shim the motor accordingly. Much like the 1/1 that have a car for short tracks and one for super speedways. Or you could look for a pair of traction magnets that are not so strong, and keep the set up the same.
Brasso on the armature end and its contact points! |
