The Scalextric Challenger

Your Brother (or Sister) in a box.

By Alan Smith

1/18/04

Growing up in England Scalextric was a household name. Almost every kid had a set, but even then it was often hard to find someone to race with.

I tried using two controllers, one in each hand, but it did not work. I tried rubber bands to set one controller running on its own, still no challenge. How was I ever going to get good enough to become the next Jim Clark or Graham Hill?

Not many of my mates could keep the racing fun, and when beaten they never came back.

I tried racing with my brothers and sister, but they had no dreams for becoming the next World Champion and offered little competition. They did not take racing Scalextric seriously: My brothers dreaming of becoming the next star player for the England Football Team and my sister preferred playing with her Bay City Rollers dolls or trying to play dress up with my youngest brother.

I needed competition… sadly I never found it. That is my excuse as to why I never became a World Champion racing driver.

Today’s Scalextric racers have no such excuses. All they need to do is purchase the Challenger Car Set and they are on their way.

Seriously this is a fun play item that can, depending on how you play against it, give you a good run for your money or beat you bad.

No, it will not lap your Scalextric track faster than a Formula One car and most good drivers will be able to beat it with an equal car, but where I found the most fun was running it against a car that turned close to the same lap times and seeing how consistent I could be. This guy does not let up and never threatened to go home if I beat him. I was not sure if I liked the way he smashed into my favorite car when I spun in front of him. Seems the Challenger driver has seen Days of Thunder, as he never lifted as he drove through my tire smoke.

Okay… enough of the story and down to cold hard facts.

As I mentioned above in great detail, I was looking for someone to race against, and I had tested an early Challenger prototype some time ago, so I was anxious to see how well the production car worked.

Like all normal males I opened the packaging and ignored the instructions. Heck, I tested this anyway so what did I need to know?

I knew the magnet bar had to go under the track so I cleared off my Scalextric Classic test track, placed the magnet under lane 4-- the outermost lane on my track --

-- and plugged in the Scalextric Key. Really all this does is short the lane giving full power at all times. The on-board computer in the Challenger car does the job of controlling the speed.

Now, I already mentioned that I did not read the instructions, and when I put the car down it slowly drove around the track. My heart sank… the lap time was about three minutes. Things did not look good – I’d better glance at the instructions. OK, here was my first error, you have to place the car on the track behind the magnet bar. Well at least I got the magnet bar bit right. After placing the car behind the magnet bar about six inches, the Challenger drove up to the magnet and stopped. Now what? I already put the two AA batteries in the Start Gantry. I checked the instructions again. Press the top button on the Start Gantry (Learn) and off goes the car. What the car did was measure the length of my track back to the magnet via a reader wheel attached to the front axle. It also measured the curves via another reader wheel attached to the guide. This technology is similar to a computer's cordless mouse and fairly well tested by now.

The reader on the guide tells the car the radius of the turns and direction in which the car is turning, then it is up to the Challenger's driver behind the blacked out windows to drive the track at one of two race paces: Slow or Fast.

Surely I have done enough now to race, so let’s set up the cars.

Looking for a car from the same series as the CLK, I chose a Scalextric Opel with its working head and taillights. I was not going to be outdone by Challenger with his flashing orange safety lights.

To start the race I put the Challenger on the track first and he drove up to the magnets under the track. I placed my Opel next to the Challenger and pressed the second button on the back of the Start Gantry. On came the red lights: 1, 2, 3, 4… then green: Go, go, go!

Off went the Challenger with me still sitting there. Hey, wait up! Soon I was hounding the back of his car, man those orange flashing lights are bright. Now, I have passed him, leaving him in the dust. Suddenly I remembered all those friends from years ago who would, when beaten, never want to race again. Should I slow down? No way! So, my first race was a major win for Team Opel.

It had to be tougher then that, so I tried the “Fast” setting. I put the Challenger car on again, about six inches from the start line (the magnets under the track) and he drove up and sat waiting. I lined up my Opel and set the Start Gantry to Fast mode (the third button). The lights turned red: 1, 2, 3, 4… then green and off shot the Challenger car with more speed this time. I set off in pursuit and worked harder to catch up, but still I was able to easily pass and even lap him.

This did not look good.

If all else fails read the instructions, so I stopped and went through them completely rather than skim them as I had done before. Here I found the first mistake I had made. As I said earlier, I am testing on Scalextric Classic track. There's a switch on the bottom of the car marked Classic or Sport. It was switched to Sport. I switched it over and raced again but found no difference. I knew it couldn't be right-- Scalextric would not fit a switch that had no effect. So I decided to retrain my Challenger Driver and see if that made a difference. Oh dear, now I am in trouble… he seems much quicker than before.

But just how much quicker?

Lets test the settings out, I thought, so I tried it again on my Classic track and trained the car with the switch in the Sport position. On the Slow setting (second button on the Start Gantry) the car runs 6.2 second laps. Testing it on the Fast setting (third button on the Start Gantry) bumps the time down to 5.6 seconds; on that pace an Opel can beat him easily.

I retrained Challenger in Classic mode (flick the switch on the bottom of the Challenger Car) and on the Slow setting the Challenger ran a 4.7 second lap. In Fast mode it ran 4.4 seconds, and now I knew that I had my work cut out for me.

Sure, a Formula One car can get around my test track in less than 4 seconds, and I can probably get the Opel down to around 4.2, but I make mistakes and the Challenger car just keeps on going.

OK, now I had figured out most of the settings, so I decided to make it even more of a challenge. I increased the difficulty by switching the Challenger to the slightly shorter lane 3 and put my car in the longer lane 4. Now if I get beaten I have an excuse, I have a longer lane; although it does not seem that the Challenger driver is listening to my complaints.

To make it a good race, I tried one of the older Opels fitted with a dot magnet. Now I had trouble keeping up and this was where the Challenger really came into its own. If you find a car that runs lap times close to the Challenger, you will probably tire or make an error before the end of the race. Now, if only I could get him to run more than 25 laps…

Back to those instructions.

If you want to race 50 laps you have to press either the Slow or Fast button and immediately press the Learn button. I tried this a bunch of times before I got it right. When Scalextric's directions say immediately they mean it. Not at the same time, not with a one-second delay--immediately.

I found this feature a bit fiddly, and the first thing I could not easily resolve by reading the instructions.

OK, now on to troubleshooting and different setups:

I took the Challenger to a friend’s house where he has a large Sport layout with an adjustable power supply, and it was here where I found it more of a Challenge to get the car running well.

After a bit of adjustment I found that the car runs best if trained under 14 volts. I remembered to change the chassis switch over to Sport mode, as I found that the car ran much faster in Classic mode to compensate for the raised rails on the older Classic track (SCX and possibly Ninco might require the Classic setting but Carrera must be run on Sport).

I trained the car and after a bit of braid adjustment due to the lower height on Sport track, the car started off. The Challenger ran well but I did need to clean the tires for Sport track. I tested against the old style Opel and the Challenger was harder to beat on this layout. With clean tires on the Opel I could get away, but one slide and the Challenger was all over me. We tried various settings and on the fast setting, the car was very hard to beat. To experiment we turned up the power supply to 15 volts. The Challenger started to slide coming out of the last corner onto the main straight. We continued turning up the power until the Challenger crashed out at just over 15 volts.

While training on the adjustable supply we set the voltage to 12 volts. This gave a fair pace as the other car was also running at 12 volts. Once trained you could turn up the power and the Challenger remained on the track. It did not seem a problem until the car starts to slide, then it started to lose it’s way and crash.

We tried training in the Classic setting (here the car seems to get more power anyway, probably to compensate for the raised rails on Classic track) and tried both Slow and Fast modes. With an adjustable power supply you can fine-tune the car to the limit of grip on your track by training the car in either Sport or Classic mode and by running at Slow or Fast paces. This gave a lot of adjustment to the car, and makes the Challenger a more flexible product.

We then decided to test on Carrera Track.

I set up a large Carrera set with the 1/24-type 18-volt power supply and one banked turn. Two problems were immediately apparent: The Challenger could not figure out what a banked turn was and ran too slow to take advantage of the bank. Also the 18-volt supply ran the Challenger car too fast to stay on the track consistently.

I switched to the Scalextric slicks (W8528) that come on the standard Scalextric CLK and this improved the performance. I also discovered how to sand tires on the Challenger car. To do this you need to slowly swing the car from left to right, which operates the guide and tricks the car into thinking it is running around the track. If you sand the tires without moving the car on the guide the car goes into Shutdown mode after two seconds. This feature prevents the motor from overheating if an obstacle in the car's path holds the Challenger back (by obstacle, it usually meant my car when I crashed in front of the Challenger trying to hold him off of lapping me).

After switching to slicks the car still came off way too much even on Slow, so I changed the power supply to the Carrera 14 volt pack included with Carrera's 1/32 scale sets. I was able to train and race the Challenger on the Slow setting consistently. On Fast, the lighter magnetic grip of the Carrera track still caused more crashes than I liked, but it did work.

Now I decided to take down the Carrera bank, as the Challenger car could not figure it out anyway. I retrained the car and now I had a challenge on my hands.

I had chosen to run the new Fly Ferrari 365 I am about to review and try as I might I could not even give the Challenger a run for his money. The Fly Ferrari on Carrera track is fairly loose and the Challenger would run away in a few laps, coming around to lap me several times during a 25 lap run.

On Carrera track you need a 14 volt or lower power supply. It is better to switch to the W8528 slick tires and you must train the car in Sport mode (switch on the bottom of the car) and tires must be clean.

Lastly I thought it would be fun to test two more ideas. First, can you run more than 1 Challenger at the same time? And the answer is yes. I trained 2 Challengers, at the same time even, and then raced against them. Once trained, the Start Gantry will switch on as many Challengers as you have, so on an eight-lane layout you could race your car against seven Challengers. You could even train some to run slower by using the Classic/Sport switch, and even start them at different times while using the Slow or Fast race modes on the Start Gantry.

The Start Gantry is only necessary for starting and training the car and the Challenger does not need to see the Gantry while running. The onboard computer controls the car once it starts and the magnet strip under the track tells Challenger when it has completed a lap. For best results place the magnet at least 18 inches before a corner, however, I did try training a car with the magnet strip in a turn and it worked fine.

The last thing I tried was running on a wooden track at Port Angeles Slot Car Raceway. They have an American Monarch track from the '60s with a 14.5-volt high amp power supply.

First, I added several Slot.it magnets to each dot magnet on the Scalextric magnet strip so the car could detect it through the thicker wooden track surface. I trained the car on Sport (slower running car, less magnetic grip) because the wood track has a Magnatec braid with less magnetic downforce than Sport track.

The car trained fine after adjusting the braid and all looked good, but the 14.5 volts and smooth surface proved too much-- and on the first fast turn the car consistently crashed.

I wired in a Professor Motor Controller and set the throttle position at ¾ (to lower power to the Challenger) and tried again. This time the Challenger ran smooth consistent laps around the large wooden course, indicating that it's possible by trimming down the voltage to get the Challenger to run on all the track systems and power supplies I tried… except the 18-volt Carrera, and here you could use the same trick I did on the wooden track.

To conclude, I have had a blast trying all the different options of the Challenger car. If I had been able to get one as a kid, who knows where I would be today?

Look out Michael, I’ve got to get practicing.

Hey it’s OK to dream… see you at the races.

Cheers,

Alan

PS: Don’t tell my brothers.

One more test:

A few people told me they were having problems with their Challenger cars so I did additional testing on setup of the car. It is very important that you have a good running layout without power drops around the circuit. You can test this on your home track by disconnecting the last piece of track next to your power base, so you have an incomplete circuit, and drive a car slowly around the track. If your car slows or stops, inspect and correct the last connection before the spot where the car had problems and then continue around the track. While you are doing this, test all of the lanes so your complete track will be well connected. The reason for disconnecting the track is that power normally flows both ways around your circuit, hiding poor connections and causing inconsistent performance.

After fixing poor track joints you can attach booster cables. These should be used about every 12-15 feet of track on each lane. Avoid using booster cables to hide or fix bad track joints. Fix the track first then hook up the booster cables.

Using conductive grease on every track joint will also protect track built and used in cool or damp conditions. This helps prevent corrosion in the joint and keeps your track running at top performance.

I tested eight Challenger cars and apart from finding out that you could run several at the same time on different lanes, I also found one car with a guide that would pop out during normal running. The car would then lose power and stop.

On closer inspection I found that the guide was loose in the chassis and never really clipped in. As a quick fix I used a trick that I learned racing Eazi Fit guide cars (the Scalextric name for the clip-in guide).

Slide a screwdriver shaft into the split in the guidepost while heating up the guide with a hair dryer. You can splay or widen the top tip of the guide post, making the clip in effect more aggressive. With the screwdriver blade still in position, let the guide cool. This fix cured the poor running on the one Challenger test car that had this problem.

I spoke with Scalextric R&D about this and they are aware that a very small number of cars have guides that are loose. The fix I described cured my car and should work for you, but Scalextric USA will receive a supply of the later guides, as fitted to all but a few early Challengers sold, and can supply you with a replacement. This new guide clips in tighter and won't pop out during normal use.

The only other thing I have heard of is one car that sat stationary with its light flashing in the fast sequence (double speed). This is a warning sign indicating that the car is held back (by me crashing in front of it) or that the motor has run too hot. A safety switch fitted to the car's motor casing will switch off if the motor runs too hot. After a cool-down period, the car's lights should switch back to their normal sequence and the car will run normally.

If you have a car that flashes in the fast sequence and does not run after cooling down (or never ran) this is not a setup issue and you should contact Scalextric USA's Technical Department for assistance. I personally did not have a problem and all the cars tested ran fine.

Review sample supplied by Scalextric-USA. Scalextric Challenger is available in the USA through all Scalextric USA dealers. If you have problems that you cannot resolve, Scalextric USA Tech Support can be reached at 1-877-358-6405.

You can always contact me at alan@scaleracing.com for setup tips as well, and once again have fun at the races.

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