I understand that some of the motors perform a lot better than others at 10 Volts. The last motor I drew was running at 17.6K after break-in, I was still able to get it going with a 23X9 gearing (2.55 ratio). Some may say that I could have tried a different gear ratio (ie 25X10, 2.5 ratio), but not really.
I think that by now, all of you heard of me saying never to use a 10 tooth pinion; the reason is simple: All slot.it gears are 48 pitch but the pinions are not. The 8 tooth pinion is 46.18 pitch; the 9 tooth pinion is 50.80 pitch; the 10 tooth pinion is 55.42 pitch; the 11 tooth pinion is 60.04 pitch. The difference in pitch is due to the fact that slot.it needed to fit all sizes of pinions inside the channel that stops the gear from moving away from them — this is a HUGE design flaw.
Back to subject; to get the better gear mesh you need to disconsider 10 and 11 tooth pinions, making the gear selection very limited.
With the current track voltage set at 10 and motors as slow as 17K, using the smallest “usable” gear ratio (9×23), the maximum RPM at the wheel is 6.6K (17000 RPM / 2.55 ) — The sweet spot for out track is around 7K for an inline configuration without ballast.
Now, if we increased the voltage of the track to say 10.5 or 11 volts, whoever picks a slower motor has greater chances. The problem here is that the person with the fastest motor could still extract better times using ballasts, so those would become illegal. Without ballast the car is still limited to the lower 7K range at the wheel or it becomes unraceable (I make up words as I go).
—- Basically my suggestion is:
- 8 or 9 tooth pinions allowed
- No ballasts
- Track voltage at 10.5 or 11 volts
Let me know if this makes sense. We can always give it a test run on a Thursday night.
Ary.