Cheater Magnets (with video bonus!)

OR…What to do about the poorest performers

I often make a big deal out of the fastest and best performing cars in my fleet while mentioning that they aren’t all winners.

So…what about those cars that don’t perform well? What about the slowpokes, the klutzes, the ones that just can’t stay on the track at anything approaching racing speeds? Or what about the ones that are too fast; the ones that can’t slow down enough going into a turn to prevent flying across the infield?

Well, fortunately I don’t have many of either, but there are a few; and after being vexed for over a year about what to do with them, I’ve come up with a solution. However, it’s a solution only if you don’t consider it cheating, because…well, it really is.

I figured I had two choices; I could either ditch about half a dozen of my cars completely, and in a couple of cases I have done that, as my recent “The Replacements” installments have shown. But, with all the talk about “equity” these days, I thought I’d try a different approach:  in order to get these worst cars to be able to have even a hope at competing, I’ve given them an advantage that none of the other cars should have.

Enter the “Max Force Gold Level” traction magnets, an after-market product with significantly more pull than the stock magnets.

I found these for sale from a vendor in California and decided to give them a try; what I got was the very definition of “too much of a good thing.” These magnets are so powerful that they prevented some of the cars I tried them in from even moving! I quickly discovered that, due to their size and shape, they can only be used on cars with full-sized tires, and they work best when those full-size tires are on the Vincent wheels, which are ever so slightly larger in diameter than the Road Race Replicas wheels.

One reason for this is that the magnets themselves are slightly taller than the stock magnets, thus they extend lower below the edge of the chassis magnet recess. Annoyingly, they are also slightly smaller in diameter, so the usual press-fit doesn’t work; they just fall out, requiring a small dot of super glue to hold them in. I’ve had a couple in which the depth of the magnet is too much by mere micrometers, and I’ve actually had to “shave” the surface of the magnet with an abrasive tool to take just that much off to keep them from dragging the track…or being too close to it to function. It takes quite of bit of time to get it right, but with enough effort, they can give a hand up to those few cars whose track performance borders on hopeless.

Witness two of my worst performers, the 1959 Studebaker Power Hawk and the yellow Auto World repress of the Aurora Chaparral 2F. The Chaparral is a poor performer primarly because of the wing, which, though it looks cool, makes the car top-heavy enough that it tends to just roll over in hard cornering. I actually did take the wing off at one point, which improved the situation, but it just doesn’t look right to me without it, so back on it went. I fitted the car with low-profile silicone tires to get it closer to the track and even added a set of the OS3 Black Dragon high-performance motor magnets, which help provide additional downforce, but it still wasn’t enough; the car could rarely finish a race without deslotting, and in a “3-strikes” run-which most of my races are-the car went out with a “DNF” at least 50% of the time.

I was getting ready to retire it when I found the Max Force magnets, so I refitted the car with standard sized tires and, after the laborious process of fitting, adjusting, and shaving a bit, gave it a try.

NIGHT AND DAY DIFFERENCE!

The Studebaker is a similar story, only instead of being particularly top heavy, it’s just a clumsy car that’s big and heavy with an excessive amount of front and rear overhang that made it behave like a “barbell” in cornering; it, also, could rarely finish a race. With a properly adjusted Max Force magnet, it was transformed into more than a competent performer; its now downright fast, and can keep up with the other big finned ‘50’s cars in the Muscle fleet.

A couple of cars that were too fast for their own good also benefitted from these magnets; the red #38 Alfa Romeo P33/3 was screaming fast and rides on standard sized tires with a short wheelbase, making it tall and thus unstable; although it’s a terror in the straights, even performance motor magnets didn’t introduce enough “braking power” to slow it down for the turns, so a Max Force magnet give it the extra “stick” it needed. Ditto with the white #23 Corvette, a long wheelbase car which is also long and fairly heavy and which rides on full-sized tires; fitted with these magnets, its gone from an also-ran to a high-end contender that took 3^rd place in the first “64 Pack” Sports Car tournament ever held at DC Mk. IV!

Now, understand there is a very high price to be paid for using these magnets; first off, because they are so powerful, they will slow the car down, so if you have a weak or slow motor to begin with, they are not recommended; you have to give up some straight line speed to gain some cornering. More concerning is that using these will significantly shorten the life of the motor; the motor is really going to strain to move the car at racing speeds with a traction magnet this strong, and while you can tune and adjust the car for the right speed as well as the right balance, its only logical that this amount of drag is going to result in excessive wear. For these reasons, its important to consider carefully whether this is the solution you want to go with.

I’ve decided to use these on only a small handful of cars on a “trial basis.” I am racing them, but I’m keeping an eye on how they behave and if I find the motors are burning out too quickly, they’ll be retired; I can shorten the life of a motor somewhat for the sake of performance-I mean, these are racing cars, after all!-but I’m not going to trash motors at a rate so high that it becomes “economically unsustainable.” I’ll report in these here pages how it shakes out, but for now, 5 cars in my fleet that were either “un-runnable” or ungovernable now at least have a chance to show on race day. One can’t help thinking that even with that extra drag and the wear it will induce, the cars and their drivers are thankful to have a shot!

Video of these magnets in action!