Best 1 43 Slot Cars

4/10/2022/ Comments off

Best 1 43 Slot Cars Average ratng: 7,9/10 8531 votes

Top 10 Best Model Cars 1 43 Scale On The Market. #5 Carrera 64144 Red Bull Racing RB14 M. Verstappen #33 GO!!! Analog Slot Car Racing Vehicle 1:43 Scale. #10 Carrera 64128 Mercedes-AMG F1 W09 EQ Power+ GO!!! Analog Slot Car Racing Vehicle 1:43 Scale. Learn about the features of their 1:24, 1:32, and 1:43 scale tracks below. CARRERA 1:24 SCALE TRACK. Carrera has carved out a unique niche in the slot car market with their line of 1:24 scale slot car tracks. Carrera offers the widest tracks in 124 scale (7.79'/198mm wide) that enable racing both 1:24 and 1:32 scale cars.

Some of the more frequent questions we get about 1:43 scale slot cars are: “How do I get more and different cars? … The selection is limited… I’d like to have such and such car but I can’t find it anywhere …”
The best answer is: “use anything you can lay your hands on that is remotely at scale and convert it into a slot car.”
In the following, you’ll find all kinds of examples of conversions with some info that should help you duplicate some of these, should you want to. This is by no means exhaustive, and if you visit the 1:43 Home Racing World forum you’ll find many more examples of great conversions there. This is also one of the greatest parts of this hobby, create your own car that you can actually drive on the track, and because it is 1:43 scale, it will be very cheap.
For more information on where to find some of the parts or cars mentioned here, start with this web page; for more info on 1:43 cars check this.
The first section below is dedicated to bodies, the second to motors, the third to chassis conversions, and the fourth to spare parts.

1. Bodies

There is a somewhat limited choice of bodies in both Artin and Carrera Go!!! But even on a budget you can still expand your stables easily as 1/43 is a scale rich in static models of all kinds.

AMT plastic kits

AMT makes easy to assemble 1:43 scale kits of very decent quality, the cars being mostly classic American muscle cars. These can be found quite easily on E-bay at prices that should be below $10 each. They can be converted quite easily on Carrera Go!!! chassis. In the picture below, the two Corvettes are actually sitting on a Carrera Go!!! Mini Cooper chassis. You can learn more about Carrera Go!!! Cars here.

Heller/Airfix plastic kits

Heller-Airfix makes many plastic models in 1:43 scale. These can be found at pretty much any hobby shop and can be quite easily converted on either Carrera Go!!! chassis or Artin chassis. You can see more on these kits conversions here. There are Le Mans cars (as shown on picture below), Rallye cars, classic European cars, …

Lindbergh plastic kits

Lindbergh is another company that makes 1:43 scale easy to assemble kits that can be found on E-bay. These are racecars from the 60’s and 70’s. Again, they are easiest to assemble on Carrera Go!!! chassis as in the picture below: Ford GT on an Aston Martin chassis and Chaparral on a Corvette C5R chassis.

Legend of Racing resin bodies

Legend of Racing has a set of 12 NASCAR cars spanning the 50’s to the 80’s. They are twelve cars in all in the collection and 18,000 of each car were made. They can be found easily through E-bay, although they have gotten a bit expensive of late at about $10 each. These cars can be easily converted on an Artin chassis (use an F1 chassis like those coming from the X22 Firebird) assuming that you get your hands on the so-called “chassis extenders” that can be found here (scroll a while until you see them) or e-mail The Judge.
Tim Flock in a 1952 Hudson Hornet #91
Buck Baker in a 1956 Chrysler #300B
Jack Smith in a 1960 Pontiac Bonneville #47
Fireball Roberts in a 1962 Pontiac Bonneville #22
Ned Jarrett in a 1965 Ford Galaxy 500 #11
Fred Lorenzen in a 1965 Ford Galaxy 500 #28
Curtis Turner in a 1965 Ford Galaxy 500 #41
Jim Vandiver in a 1969 Dodge Daytona #31
David Pearson in 1971 Mercury Cyclone #21
James Hylton in a 1972 Mercury Cyclone #48
Benny Parsons in a 1973 Chevy Malibu #72
Bill Elliott in a 1985 Ford Thunderbird #9

Custom Resin Bodies

There are quite a few people and companies that make custom resin bodies in this scale. Some will be very expensive (like these); some will be cheaper if you look on E-bay (usually sold under the category resin kit) or like those shown here. For more info on these kits below, click here. They are designed to be mounted on Artin 1:43 chassis.

Vacuum Formed bodies by Matt4x4

Matt4x4 makes vacuum formed bodies that are very easily mounted on an Artin chassis. You can see the list and prices of bodies available from Matt at the Home Racing World Forum, scroll down ‘til you see his name.

Vacuum Formed bodies by Hotlaps23

Hotlaps23 makes vacuum formed bodies that are very easily mounted on an Artin chassis. You can look for him through google or look for Hoptlaps23 at the Home Racing World 1/43 Forum.

Vacuum Formed bodies by FastSide

Fastside makes vacuum formed bodies that are designed to be mounted on an Artin 1:43 chassis. He has about 50 different body styles that are run on a 1/43 rd 1/8 mile scale dragstrip in Texas. If interested give him a call at 1 254 799 6335 (preferred) or e-mail alfredside@aol.com.

There are other sources for vacuum formed 1:43 bodies, for example Peter “Pfuetze” in Austria makes some, check here and now Liberty (Steve) from Rand Design also makes some really nice ones, check here.

Fastlane Superslick bodies

It turns out that there are fairly nice and cheap 1/43 bodies that can be found on Amazon: Fast Lane 1:43 Scale body Kit Super Slick 2 Pack for $5.99. These are also found at Toys’R Us and other places. With minor work, they can be adapted to the Artin chassis. More details can be found here.

Windracer NASCAR plastic bodies

Dollar General and other Dollar stores have the so-called Windracer cars that can be found as cheap as $1.50 each. They are very easy to convert if you use the chassis extenders (They can be found here, scroll a while until you see them, or e-mail The Judge). Similar bodies can be found at Wallmart sold as pull back cars.

Other plastic bodies

Anywhere you can find a plastic body at scale, you can convert it

Die Cast Metal bodies

One cheap and quick way of having 1:43 cars with great detail is to convert any of the multitudes of die cast metal cars available in this scale. It is easily done although the cars can be quite difficult to drive due to their weight. When choosing a diecast model to convert, some are 2 to 3 times heavier than others, so try to pick the lighter ones. You can equally easily convert to Artin and/or Carrera Go!!! chassis. More details can be found here.

Paper/Cardboard bodies by Hotlaps23

Hotlaps23 makes plastified paper/cardboard Dirt Late Model bodies that are designed to be mounted on an Artin chassis. You can see the list and prices of bodies available from Hoptlaps23 at the Home Racing World Forum, scroll down ‘til you see his name.

Make your own Dirt Late Model

Using one of the Artin race trucks and some styrene, you can make your own Dirt Late Model very easily.

Below is a modified car that started life as an Artin C5R Corvette.

Anything goes

You can even do bigger models like campers and trucks. These will usually not break track records, but they are fun to take out once in a while.

Artin repaints

Maybe the easiest way to get nice looking bodies is to take old or existing Artin bodies and repaint and redecal them. Entire batches of old Artin bodies can easily be found for a few $$ on E-bay. More details can be found on the pictures below can be found here.

2. Motors

The stock Artin configuration uses a standard S-can motor, can drive. This means that you can pretty much use any 1/32 motor and pop it into an Artin chassis. Why you would do this with a $20 slot.it or Ninco motor is beyond me, so below you’ll find some cheaper examples. The Carrera go!!! motor is different as it stands pretty much on it’s own without many known replacements. More on motors can be found here.

Artin chassis with Carrera Go!!! motor

You can find at Slot Car World the Carrera Go!!! motors for sale. This motor can be mounted easily onto the Artin chassis as is, you’ll just need 2-part epoxy to fix it in place as it is much smaller than the Artin stock motor. You can also keep the pinion that comes on the Go!!! motor to mesh with the Artin axle gear.

Artin chassis with Electronic Goldmine motor

You can find at Electronic Goldmine a great little DC motor that is ideal for this scale: model G9330 at $1.25 each. This motor can be mounted easily onto the Artin chassis as is, you’ll just need 2-part epoxy to fix it in place as it is much smaller than the Artin stock motor. You can also keep the pinion that comes on the goldmine motor to mesh with the Artin axle gear. Note that this motor is the same size as the Scalextric F1 motors and uses the same pinions.

Artin chassis with green end bell motor

You can find at Slot Car World (and a few other slot retailers) a great little motor that will let you run your Artin cars at 12-14 V and be competitive with Carrera Go!!! Cars. This motor is a direct replacement of the stock Artin motor and just snaps into place. Because this motor has much more torque than the Artin stock motor, it is highly recommended to glue it in place from the sides (hot glue).

Artin chassis with XMODs motor

You can find at Radio Shack a series of cheap motors for the XMODs RC cars. Because this motor also has much more torque than the Artin stock motor, it is highly recommended to glue it in place from the sides (hot glue). These motors are much faster than the Artin motors at 6-7 Volts (rated at 30,000 rpms at 6V) and have much more torque, but they require much more current (more than 1.5 Amps at 12V) that the stock Artin wall warts cannot provide.

3. Chassis

Artin chassis are as simple as it comes. More details on the Artin chassis can be found here. Carrera Go!!! chassis are specific to each car and as far as I know are not sold as spares other than at SCW.

Artin chassis with guide

You can easily replace the Artin pin guide and braids with a guide flag, this makes for a different driving where the cars will slide a bit more, check out more details in this article.

Artin chassis with extender

When fitting a car with a longer wheel base on an Artin chassis is a problem, you can use the so-called “chassis extenders” that can be found here (scroll a while until you see them) or e-mail The Judge. As can be seen from the pictures below, you can mount the chassis in the bodies by just gluing them (left) or you can epoxy some body posts at the appropriate locations on the body and screw in the chassis (right)

Artin chassis with guide flag extender

The Judge also makes a chassis extender that can hold a guide flag and let you remove the Artin stock pin guide and braids.

Aluminum chassis

The Judge also makes a complete custom chassis. Details can be found here. There are a few variations of that chassis, check it out, the quality is good and the prices are great!!!

Scratch built chassis

Of course, just like in the other scales, you can decide to just scratch-build your chassis. The example below shows a styrene scratch-built chassis. You can see more on this chassis here.

4. After Market parts

Tires & Wheels from Liberty

Liberty sells the best tires and wheels for Artin 1/43. See here. He sells rear aluminum wheels with silicon tires, front aluminum wheels with rubbers, but his rear tires also fit the standard Artin plastic wheel.

Ranch Design and KD tires have now teamed up to bring you the best possible tires for all your 1/43 cars, from Artin to Carrera Go!!! to SCX compact !!!

Gearing and Axles from Liberty

Liberty also sells rear axles and gearing. See here. He has 0.085” axles (Artin axles are larger than 2 mm but smaller than 3/32), crown gears and 1.5 mm pinions for the Electronic GoldMine motor. To my knowledge, Liberty is the only one offering crown gears that fit the Artin axles.

Other sources for pinions

For all standard Artin motors, any source of standard 2 mm pinions will do. For the Goldmine motors that have a 1.5 mm shaft, other than Liberty above, you can use the Scalextric pinion packs for their F1 cars or pinions from Tim Johnson at Slot Car Heroes.

Slot car racing is an exciting, interactive hobby for automobile fans and anyone who likes speed and competition. Slot cars make a great alternative to video games because they tap into similar skill sets—hand-eye coordination, risk-reward thinking, competition, manual dexterity—yet remain physical, i.e. hands-on, three-dimensional and face-to-face.

We carry two high quality slot car brands: Carrera, which tends to appeal to younger racers, and Scalextric Sport, which attracts an older audience and enthusiasts. In other words, Carrera is a little bit “toy,” while Scalextric is much more “hobby.” In this post, I’ll explain some of the features of each brand to help you make a better purchase.

Digital vs. analog

Both Carrera and Scalextric offer analog and digital formats. With an analog set—the sort that has been around for half a century—you can only race as many cars as you have lanes. Your controller adjusts the current sent to the track lane, which speeds up and slows down the car in that particular lane. With a digital setup, the controller is programmed to control the car itself. Digital sets have crossover sections that allow you to switch from lane to lane for passing, blocking, and overtaking. These tracks also support more cars, so that three or four (with some sets, up to six) people can race at the same time. I’ll come back to that a little later.

3 Questions to Help Decide What's Right for You

There are a few things to consider up front if you’re looking at a slot car set:

How old are your racers? I do not recommend slot-car racing for very young children. Ideally, a child should be eight or older, and certainly no younger than six or seven. Eight might even be pushing it for the more technical demands of an advanced Scalextric set.
You need a good deal of skill and finesse to navigate the track, especially around turns, and practice is absolutely necessary. You can’t simply haul back on the throttle and expect the cars to zoom around flawlessly. They will hop out of the slot and skitter away. Of course, that’s part of the fun. If there were no skill involved, you would get bored pretty quickly. For the most part, a child younger than 8 simply lacks the dexterity and coordination to grasp the finer points of adjusting speed to stay on track, and may not have the patience to put in the necessary practice.

Where will you put your track? The three-dimensional, hands-on, physicality of slot racing is great, but this does mean that you need space to dedicate to your layout. Even the smallest tracks are several feet across. You don’t want it in the middle of the living room where it will get stepped over—or on!—bumped, full of cookie crumbs and pet hair. The track pieces are generally pretty flexible and robust, and are designed to withstand a trodding or two, but they aren’t indestructible.

How often will you be racing? It's not a good idea to set up the track, race a few laps, and then pack it away again. The tracks are designed to be assembled and disassembled without too much effort, but only infrequently. Pulling track pieces apart is usually a little tougher than clipping them together, and can require a good deal of force. You want to make sure that you tug evenly so you don’t snap off the connector tabs that hold them together. Repeated assembly and disassembly will also eventually wear and loosen the connectors, when what you want is a snug fit.
Your best option is to set up the track in a place where it can be left out, ideally on a table or platform of some sort. Take it apart only when you want to add to or modify the layout.

Carrera

Carrera has two product lines: GO!!! (analog) and Digital 143. Both are 1:43 scale, so a little on the smaller side. Carrera GO!!! is a perfect starter line. With fun themes like Mario Kart, and Disney/Pixar’s Cars 3, and exciting “action” features like loops, jumps, elevated banks that run up walls, the tracks are ideal for children around eight years old. Sets and accessories are modestly priced, too.

Digital 143

Digital 143 is more advanced, and pricier. Digital cars, for instance, are about double the cost of analog. However, if this is the first track, starting with a digital set can be a good investment, because upgrading from analog to digital requires a bunch of new equipment, including a new powerbase, new cars, and some lane-changing track. The good news is that standard track pieces are universal, so the majority of a GO!!! setup will be ready to go should you decide to upgrade to Digital 143.

The benefit of Carrera’s digital sets is that it supports up to three cars at once and allows for lane switching. Lane changes are done by holding a button on the controller before reaching a special crossover track. For the Digital 143 line, Carrera makes crossover tracks red (or green on the MarioKart set) rather than black so you can identify them easily. Crossover tracks can be single (right-to-left, left-to-right), or double (“X”-shaped).

Scalextric

Our Scalextric sets are the better choice for hobbyists. Scalextric sets have bigger, more detailed cars (1:32 scale), some of which sport cool features like working lights and, in the case of James Bond’s Aston Martin from Goldfinger, ejector seats. They let you build bigger and more technically challenging track layouts, and offer bigger and better opportunities for customization and modification, especially with Scalextric’s digital sets.

There is even a dedicated community of Scalextric racing hobbyists, who conduct full-on tournament racing with rules and regulations. With this in mind, you’ll find that Scalextric tends toward more realism—you won’t find jumps and loops here—and more technical demands.

A Note on Track

Scalextric makes a wide range of track pieces to customize your layout. Straight tracks come in a number of lengths and formats. Some of the unique pieces that are available include starter grids, crossovers for making figure-eights, side-swipes for bumping other racers, and single-lane tracks to run alongside pit lanes. There are borders and guardrails that clip along the side of just about any piece of track to help prevent you from jumping the track. Because the track is flexible, you can give some height to your layouts with elevation supports, banked curve supports, and elevated crossovers.

There are numerous options for curves, from lazy wide turns to harrowing hairpins, crossovers and side-swipes, letting you add a ton of variety and challenge to your set.

The track selector wheel demonstrates the range of curves available. You can find lots of support atscalextric.com/uk-en/, including a download for a Track Designer to help build your layout. It’s also very easy to find online forums and communities to get ideas for customizing your setup.

Scalextric Digital

One of the nice things about Scalextric is that the transition between analog and digital is pretty smooth. Upgrading an analog set will require a new power base, transformer, and some lane-changing track, but the cars are not hooked into one or the other exclusively. Analog cars will run on a digital set with a few button presses on the power base. Lane-changing will be disabled, obviously, but it’s nice to know that your old cars won’t be obsolete if you upgrade. You can do the opposite, too: a digital car will work on an analog set, should the need arise. Most of the analog cars we stock from Scalextric come “digital ready,” and can be upgraded to digital with the simple installation of a microchip. And yes, like Carrera, standard track is compatible between digital and analog; only lane-changing elements are exclusive to digital setups.

Most digital sets from Scalextric come with a power base that supports up to four cars, and can do a few neat tricks like set the cars to run either clockwise or counterclockwise. Stepping up to the Advanced Six-Car Power Base brings a ton of features, like the ability to program various racing modes, set speed caps on individual cars, set cars to reduce speed or even pause in the event that one racer jumps the track, and so on. As far as I’m concerned, however, the coolest feature is the ability to run ghost cars, so you have some competition even when you’re racing by yourself.

ARC systems (App Race Control)

The ARC ONE, ARC AIR and ARC PRO (for digital sets) are the latest additions to Scalextric’s product lineup, which takes advantage of hand-held smart devices to add a whole new dimension to slot racing as a hobby. Set up a Bluetooth-enabled device opposite the power base and use the free iOS or Android application to create and control races, track your statistics, manage and share your collection, and more.

Before you start, you can choose from several different types of races, including Quick Race, Practice, Grand Prix, Endurance, Tournament, Drag Race, Arcade and Pace Car, although not every race is available in all ARC systems. As you play, the app monitors just about anything you can think of, from lap times and lap counts, to speed and penalties. There are several cool additions to mix things up. Turning on fuel consumption, tire wear, or car damage, means that you have to keep an eye on the condition of your car and make a stop in the pits when necessary—or risk disqualification. There are even random “incidents” like engine blow-outs and punctured tires that can bring another measure of unpredictability and realism to the race. After the race, you get analytic breakdowns of your speed, start reaction times, fuel use, and so on, which you can post to Twitter or Facebook.

Finally, there is a “Garage” mode, in which you can catalogue the cars in your collection, save track layouts, and post photos. You can also log your track pieces and accessories and use the app to explore possible layout designs.

The ARC Systems each have their own exciting features.

ARC level ARC race control system

1 24 Slot Car Tracks For Sale

Hard-wired hand controllers
Core app functionality
Analogue system
2-car racing

Key features:

Pit stops
Post-race statistics

Mid-range ARC race control system

2.4Ghz wireless hand controllers
Intermediate app functionality
Analogue system
2-car racing

Key Features:

All of the features of ARC One plus:

Wireless controllers (plus rumble)
Variable race conditions
Braking button

Premium ARC race control system

2.4GHZ wireless hand controllers
advanced app funcitonality
Digital system
Multiple car racing (up to 6)