Slot cars - something to do in Winter.

[johnnydmd]

I grew up with slot cars in the 70's and have been itching for years to put up a track in my basement. I had a cousin and uncle that built a really nice 1/43 scale track in their unfinished basement and I spent the summer of 77 down there racing every day. I guess these days there are 1/32 and 1/24 which are more popular, so I started looking into it. I figured I'd pick up a few cars and keep a lookout for a big lot of cheap track to get started. This would definitely be a Wintertime project, and really maybe something I'd just collect stuff and one day get around to doing it. About a year ago I picked up a slick 1/32 RevoSlot Viper and put it on a shelf. Incidentally, that car is what inspired me to make a Viper body for my RC drag car (along with the name of the chassis I designed). I would just keep a lookout for deals. I found a couple more Vipers (one of each "major" generation change) on the cheap. I would check eBay once in a while to see if there was a track set, and a couple weeks ago I found a great deal on a huge lot for 50 bucks. So I pounced on that!

Went to Lowes, grabbed a 4x8 sheet of plywood, some astroturf, and set up a table. I had also found another batch of cheap track, so got that too. All in all, very little spent.

These are the cars I found. Much nicer than the 1/43 and HO cars when I was a kid!

Table with the smaller batch of track arriving first.

Once all the lots arrived, I got to designing something. I wound up getting most of the track used up. All of it needed a good cleaning with fine grit sandpaper though.

Cars run great around it (I tweaked a few of the banks after taking this pic). I have a bunch of 2 inch PVC that I'll cut to make supports and replace those boxes, and I have guard rails and borders coming. I also use some of the large quantities of scrap plexiglass from vacuum forming bodies to put up some walls at the ends where curves are. I will gradually pick up some more cars over the years. All in all pretty happy with this little score! Wife really likes it and wants to race

 

[Doom!]

I miss my slot car track. when I was single, the spare bedroom in my apartment was the racing room, we spent a ridiculous amount of time in there.

 

[NCNitro]

Very cool! I still have my scalelectric 1:32 digital track. It's really cool because I can run 4 cars and controlers independently on a two lane track. I haven't set mine up for a few years though.

 

[FJC_GUY]

Fun stuff.

Was at Hobby Lobby a couple of weeks ago looking at Diecast and saw they had quite a few slot cars. LHS has a good selection as well.

I have a couple of the small cars mixed in with some diecast cars somewhere. Have to see if I can dif them out.

 

[NCNitro]

Old ping pong tables are perfect for setting up these tracks, they are 5'x9', the extra foot on each end really does make a difference for layouts over the 4'×8x plywood.

 

[Xraycer]

It's been nearly 15 years since I've raced with a group of guys in southern NH. Still got my 16'x6' 4 lanes 1/32 plastic track laying in the basement. Those rails needs a lot of elbow grease to get it back into prime condition. It's another one of my hobbies I keep telling myself I'll get back into someday.
I still have a ton of cars that are still new in box. One of these days........

 

[johnnydmd]

Old ping pong tables are perfect for setting up these tracks, they are 5'x9', the extra foot on each end really does make a difference for layouts over the 4'×8x plywood.

I bet they would for sure, shame, I had one that I got rid of about 8 years ago.

 

[johnnydmd]

I got a little time this weekend between nitro chassis builds to work on this some more. Got the supports cut, glass walls up, some guardrails (guess I need 2 or 3 more packs to complete). Raced around with my wife some (she's good for about 10 laps before getting dizzy, lol) and my daughter (who has no such issues). Both girls were pretty dang good at this! Spent a little time tuning and adjusting the two working Vipers and got the RevoSlot one (the red 2nd gen Viper) rolling REAL good! That thing is just smooth as hell, with its ball bearing axle mounts, aluminum chassis. The Scaleauto Viper (silver fifth gen) was ok, but really needs some work to compete with the RevoSlot car. It is fast as hell, but not nearly as smoothly accelerating/braking, and likes to jump out quite a bit more. I managed to snag a slick aluminum motor pod that fits it, and I'll set that up and swap it out. Definitely needs an upgraded guide, the stock one is trashy. Will check into a better motor and gears too. Really wanna get this one able to compete with the RevoSlot car. Might add some weight to the nose too.

 

[Xraycer]

Are you running your cats with or without magnets?

 

[johnnydmd]

Are you running your cats with or without magnets?

With rear magnets. I tried the RevoSlot without, and it was not real fast, spun out quite a bit. As I understand it, the motor also creates a magnetic effect, right? Which might explain that when the ScaleAuto car comes out, it's usually when it's going mid speed rather than faster.

 

[BuZzLigHtyEAR]

 

[Xraycer]

With rear magnets. I tried the RevoSlot without, and it was not real fast, spun out quite a bit. As I understand it, the motor also creates a magnetic effect, right? Which might explain that when the ScaleAuto car comes out, it's usually when it's going mid speed rather than faster.

The club I used to race with ran cars exclusively without magnets. Without magnets, you must learn to "drive" a car through turns. However, running sans magnets would require the use of silicone tires. Standard stock rubber tires just won't work well.

 

[johnnydmd]

I cut my custom chassis this weekend. Will order the rest of the parts some time next month, as well as a blank body kit to re-create Invader in 1/32 size. The already painted body I have fits on perfect though. Need to print out a rear valance yet and bolt in on.

 

[Chubaka]

I miss my slot car track. when I was single, the spare bedroom in my apartment was the racing room, we spent a ridiculous amount of time in there.

I picture a Big Bang Theory group of guys around a car track.

 

[Xraycer]

I picture a Big Bang Theory group of guys around a car track.

I was thinking more along the lines of Revenge of the Nerds

 

[WickedFog]

I cut my custom chassis this weekend. Will order the rest of the parts some time next month, as well as a blank body kit to re-create Invader in 1/32 size. The already painted body I have fits on perfect though. Need to print out a rear valance yet and bolt in on.

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Dude! That is the baddest slot car ever! GO NEEERRDS!

 

[Smilinbri]

Man, great setups!!! Love em!!! Just got this for xmas from Santa. Also have the Dukes of Hazzard one, but haven't gotten that out in a while. So much fun!!!

 

[DavidB1126]

I love knight rider. My notification sound is "Michael, I'm picking up a transmission"

 

[Iowa crawler]

I started my racing career on a slot car track some guys across the street built. It was so big they had four transformers running it. They also had a scale 1/4 mile that went through the wall. I thought that was the coolest thing.

 

[johnnydmd]

Got all the guard rails up that I wanted. Now I just gotta paint my supports and build a little bridge for one spot that needs it. I was running laps with all my cars the past couple of days with the lap counter/timer.

The results were interesting. In lane 1 (where the silver Gen 5 viper sits), I was able to do 5.6 seconds. In lane 2, I got a record of 5.2 seconds. I think that I might change the criss cross sections for ones that narrow instead. Overall though, both lanes you can fly around pretty well, but each has their spots where you can spin out and have to throttle down. I do want to eventually get some buildings and stuff to complete this thing, and maybe some better controllers. These are ok (just the stock Scalextric), but don't have a lot of travel, making it harder to more smoothly speed up or slow down accurately.

Testing each car in the faster lane (2) the best I got was:

RevoSlot Red Gen 2 Viper: 5.3s
ScaleAuto Silver Gen 5 Viper: 5.2s
Scalextric Blue Gen 4 Viper: 5.7s

The RevoSlot and ScaleAuto are very close to each other. I think I could get faster with the RevoSlot. Will be interesting to see what my custom one will do.