Thanks for your comment Martin. In this basic introduction, I have used the usual shorthand that if a manufacturer calls their motor 18,000 rpm, then that’s what I use too. As you say, there is always variation – and often quite large variation. The ‘Slot Car News Motor List’ (Google it) is a fabulous piece of research and worth looking at. One of many things I learned from that article is that the rpm is not always the most important feature of a motor, but how quickly a motor gets there – roughly indicated by the overall power figure. As I touched on in my blog post, the Scalextric FF motor is more powerful than the more common Scalextric Mabuchi short-can. That can make it more of a handful – especially running without magnets or on a wood & copper-tape track. In that situation, you’d absolutely want to change the motor to a less powerful one. I will be looking at a couple non-magnet set-ups at the end of this tuning series, but most of the blog posts are focused on standard Scalextric cars, running with magnets on a Scalextric Sport home track – which is how most Scalextric cars are used.

Of course…