some more slots off the shelf and on the track

[jbwelda]

so since it seems like theres some interest in home built, realistic 1/32 scale slot cars heres some more pics of cars ive built up in the past couple years:

first off, an allard (i forget the exact designation, J2X maybe?). this was a resin kit that fit over a heavily modified scaletrix lotus seven chassis. roughest part of this one was mounting front fenders to be strong enough to take a crash or two but still look elegant like the real ones:

then theres this clear plastic bodied cooper in more like 1/25 scale, on a brass chassis thats been fairly heavily modified, with pittman motor:

[Guest zebm1]

How do those Scaletrix multi-car slot tracks work? Years ago I had an AMT slot track, which waz a ton of fun....but HUGE...... but I have been thinking about tha new-er slot tracks....just ta play sum.....

:twisted: Zeb

[jbwelda]

zeb you mean the two lane ones or the four lane ones?

ive never run on a four lane one but scaley sells inner and outer turns just for those...ive used the inner and outer to make increasing or decreasing radius curves from time to time but never set up a full 4 lane track and right now my and my friends slot racing space is limited so we barely got room for a decent 2 laner.

as for how well they work, well they dont work really at all unless you have two power supplies and rewire the track to use one power supply per lane. not hard to do but if you dont then your car runs x fast with only one car on the track but only half x fast if another is put on the other lane, and it *really* gets exciting when one of the two comes off the track because the remaining one doubles it speed which is all fine and dandy unless youre in the middle of the curve and then its a disaster!

but the great thing about modern home track is that they have steel instead of aluminum rails and that allows you to use magnets for better traction. but that gets old after awhile because you get to the point where you can just hold the trigger down and go full bore all day long without even watching the cars. so we have pretty much ditched the magnets in favor of having to drive; or at the most have a small magnet for just a bit more traction. thats an advantage to open body motors like pittman etc...they have this big honking magnet built into the motor and you hang that thing as low as you can and you have "no magnet" but magnatraction anyway! makes them almost competitive with cans!

another thing is the lap counters and timers that are typically available with the scaley tracks suck. i got a cheap computer and some lap timing software, mounted some photocells in the track and a light overhead (just a high intensity lamp on an arm really...jazzed it up with some banners so it looked more like something at a starting line) and that worked great. the monitor looked like a digital scoreboard. unfortunately we dont have room for that so we are back to no lap counter/timer.

i wish i didnt have so many real cars so i could set up a nice track again in my garage but that aint happening. im thinking about moving to utah next year and if i do im going to buy a house big enough for me and my toys including one room just for a nice track. problem being all my friends will be back in cali including my girlfriend.

[ramonesblues]

jah, you might consider moving to Idaho,as the housing prices are very low compared with what you get.you can get a huge house for under 200k.Also, a lot of houses have shops., so you would have lots of room.

[Guest zebm1]

What's in Idaho, besides taters? :wink:

:twisted: Zeb

I had an idea for running 4 cars on a 2-lane track, way back in tha 60s. Use a standard pickup shoe, with a spring-loaded electrical contact post that runs down thru tha shoe at it's pivot point. That way yu'd have 2 cars per lane, but yu'd have to wire up a directional switch (kinda like a model railroad switch), my problem back then was how to allow more than one passing lane and restrict tha switching to just that section yur car or cars were on. Got computers now.

Oh yeah, on tha pickup shoes, one car would use tha left brush as positive, tha other would use tha right side brush as positive. Negative at tha center.

Is that clear enuff?

[jbwelda]

oh i gotcha...those tracks where you can run >1 car per slot.

never had any experience with them and im not really sure i get the concept except that maybe it would be more realistic in that you would have to fight for a passing lane and couldnt just pass any old time.

but...no experience with them. having an "X" over track or a chicane where the track narrows so only one car can pass at a time is enough of a challenge for me.

[Guest zebm1]

Well, when I get sum bucks, I'm gonna get me one and see how it works.

[chris4q]

so since it seems like theres some interest in home built, realistic 1/32 scale slot cars heres some more pics of cars ive built up in the past couple years:

first off, an allard (i forget the exact designation, J2X maybe?). this was a resin kit that fit over a heavily modified scaletrix lotus seven chassis. roughest part of this one was mounting front fenders to be strong enough to take a crash or two but still look elegant like the real ones:

Real nice cars - excellent work

[Modellpularn]

Neat cars!!

Zeb; that system you talk about kind of reminds me of a slot track called Wrenn Formula 152. We had that track, my dad bought it. The cars were in 1/52 scale, and they had a clever system so you could run THREE cars on each lane! You could position the brushes either close together, or wide, or at an angle; left or right. The track had four power rails for each lane. That way you could run up to SIX cars on a two lane track!