My other race hobby!!

[Mad-Ice]

Look at this guys! Finally a small film of my giant slotracetrack. A friend of mine filmed it and I raced it!! We also race every week at an other racetrack in a competition. This is very much fun and real close racing, only no quakes, bombs and rockets! :g

http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp0NDUc90Wg

[Rapier Racer]

lol! sweet! I used to have a scalextric track, it wasn't quite 32 meters in size though :dizzy I used to get sore fingers putting it together, glad I didn't have to put that beast together.

[stin]

That`s a mega beast!!!! fantastic stuff! I used to play the old type of scalextric but not that size compare to mine!!!!

Now, my son has a full size of digital scalextric but he wants more tracks and he will get more later on....

stevie:)

[Chill]

I thought those were so awesome when I was a kid!!!! Mine glew in the dark!!!!! :D

[zargz]

I like the music!
though it never developed in to a pumping techno as I expected when the car started :D

[Lance]

I used to love slotcar racing. I drove 1/24 scale cars on the big commercial tracks you could rent time on back when slotracing was a big thing in the U.S. back in the late 60s. It disappeared after a few years, dammit. A few times since then, I've had dreams of wandering through a shopping district and finding a slot car track in a shop and becoming a regular customer and racer again. I still remember what the shop looked like in my recurring dream. And the track itself [they only had one instead of four like the bigger of the two places where I used to race regularly in real life] took up about 2/3 of the shop, crammed in there on the right side of the shop and filling it all the way from front to back. I haven't dreamed about it for a few years; who knows when the slotcar craving will strike my subconscious again! :D

[q_dmc12]

I used to have one too when I was [some age around 5] younger, it took too many batteries though and given acouple hours of continueous playtime they soon died. :(

[Medusa]

Wow, that is sweet!! Don't tell me that's your living room!:p The closest I came to having a slot-car set was a HotWheels plastic loop-the-loop track which we used marbles on instead...thinking back, it was a lot more fun than it sounds like...

[rdmx]

Yeah I had one - not Scalextrix size though, Smaller (AFX size?). You were supposed to be able to make the Albert Park Raceway out of it.

[Asayyeah]

Great video, i had the honnor to test your great slotracetrack last year , it was truly an awesome moment : not to mention how can cars be so different when racing :o

[Mad-Ice]

Thanks for the comments mates!! At Medusa: I wish it was my livingroom! We just bought a house and that is a good size too, not too big! Funny to see a lot of us had a slottrack when we were young, I think most people here are still very young, in their mind I mean and that is a good thing. I hope I will always stay a little kid who likes to play and that I will always see the positive side of everything.

At Lance 1/24 is a real cool size too, I have a few cars in that size too. This track brand (fleischmann) what you saw in the small movie is suitable for 1/24 also.

Tonight I am going to the competitiontrack for the first time this season. This season we will race the DTM cars, the GT cars and the Modified cars with the modified cars we are allowed to do everything to it but we can not use any magnetics in the car that will pull the car to the track. This is the most skillfull class. You have to be able to tune your car very well and be fast too. I will try to make a small movie of our track there sometime.

Okay greetz

[Lance]

In 1/24, we used to build our own cars from piano wire, sheet brass, and commercially made bodies, and most of us serious racers at the time wound our own motor armatures. Later, the commercial makers got really good at making them, so most of us switched to just buying them off the shelf.

[Mad-Ice]

Hi Lance

That was the serious stuff!! I would like to see some pictures of your cars, if you still have them?!

[Lance]

The last time I saw any of them, several years ago, the bodies were kinda squashed from long storage in ways they shouldn't have been stored. :naughty :redface:
I probably built the last one around 1970 or even a bit earlier, for a championship series race in Tampa, Florida. Most of the drivers were amateurs, but some of the pros were there, especially the Champion of Chamblee [a manufacturer of motors, chassis, etc.] team, with John Cukras as their lead driver. Pete von Ahrens and Chris... um whatsisname [who won the event, which was run as a series of heats] were also there. The factory rep, Bob Cozine,[edit: come to think of it, it was Bob Rule. Cozine was Champion's armature winder, and he was there, too.] was there, 'working the crowd'. I chatted with him for a while. I went out fairly early when I sailed my car over a bump in the track near the end of the long straight, crashed into the retainer wall up on the banking, and my car had the ultralight plastic body caught in the drive gears. That was in the fourth heat, I think; I had won the first three.

edit: here's a website that shows something of the history of the Champion company, which was very important in the the sport.
http://www.electricdreams.com/vintage.php?action=fullnews&id=29

[mclarensmps]

I have toyed with the idea of getting into slot cars, because they seem to be an insane amount of fun, and agonizingly difficult to perfect :D.

Unfortunately, I am not privy on how popular it is here in toronto, in that whether there are places that have nice big tracks to race on. The thought of building my own track (which, if i went into slot car racing as a hobby, i would eventually end up doing), is just such an expensive proposition.

That said, imagine spa or suzuka in your basement? oooooooohhhhh /drool.

[Lion]

cool :)
I got into AFX cars when I was a kid, and spent a lot of time with Tamiya 1/32nd scale cars in their walled tracks in the first half of the 90s
it's a pity that all of that sorta thing has disappeared

[Task]

Great story there, good link Lance!
So now I know why my dad was into slot cars back in the 70's when I was a kid: Apparently it was a big thing back then!
Rival manufacturers, champion racers trying to prove their equipment better, classic stuff!

[stin]

Thanks for the link Lance and to me, it`s looks serious stuff.

stevie:)

[Lance]

There were substantial prizes in merchandise, and sometimes cash, plus the companies gave their own drivers victory bonuses in cash. There were racetracks all across America for a few years, weekly newsheets [no internet, of course], monthly magazines with equipment reviews, race reports, and of course, tons of adverts. Once things began to decline, though, it all went away very quickly so that public raceways were very hard to find. I loved it while it lasted.

[Mad-Ice]

Hi there, I raced some legends in Amsterdam during the tourist trophy! Lance, maybe you know them?

Chris Radisich en Howie Ursaner

http://www.slotracinglemans.com/newforum/viewthread.php?tid=1353&page=1#pid7639

Next week I will post some pictures of a track I am building together with a friend of mine. A little bit smaller than the vid of my first post in this thread but, with scenery and all. Well, it still needs some work but we are getting closer.

Greetz Mad-Ice

[eLhabib]

Awesome racetrack on the picture there! Really cool hobby, though I'd probably enjoy the trackbuilding more than actually racing on it :)

[DeepMix]

wow really cool race hobby, i have a slot race track too but its way smaller than yours ( i hope it still works lol)

[Lance]

Mad-Ice, I've heard of Howie Ursaner; he used to be mentioned in the magazines. Never met him, though.

[Mad-Ice]

Slowly but surely it is coming up nicely! Tonight we will put the track inbetween the black side pieces, so we can race. The only thing I have to fix is the electronic lapcounter and we can set our Time Trials records and Speed Laps records. Weapon races will be added later on ;)

[blackwiggle]

Looks very nice and brought back some memories.
How many lanes is that going to be Mad-Ice ? 2 or 4?
I got my first Scalextric for Xmas back in 1965 :eek ,which my brother who is 12 years old promptly took control of.
He ended up racing around various tracks like Lance said he did until around 1970, but I doubt it was ever as big in the UK/Aus as it was in the USA.

There use to be a 8 lane track nearby that was part of a Tenpin bowling ally until about 8 years ago,you used to be able to rent blocks of race time on it,the last one that I know about,nothing now.

I remember I had a brief rekindling for racing model cars in 1978.
The Aus $ then was worth more than double what it is now, so AFX track and cars were very cheap.
I ended up buying enough track to make a 8 lane version that is very similar in layout to what you have just built, I ended up moving before it got to the stage yours is, and giving it all away to this kid next door who's eyes nearly popped out of his head when I gave it to him.:lol

It's a great pastime and not as easy to get good at as people might imagine.
Very similar to Wipeout in that respect.

[Mad-Ice]

Thanks mate! It's going to be 2 lanes. In the first post of this thread there is a link to a 4 lane track from us. At first we wanted to built that one but it was too big for the height of the roof. We would not be able to see all the corners if the track was on a table like the one we have now.

Cool that you are having some nice memories too about the old days of slotcar racing. Yeah those were the days, everywhere slotcar tracks and a lot more people to compete with. Anyway, there are still enough pilots to compete with and yes, it is very hard to be good at it when you are racing in the top class. The differences are smaller than any Wipeout race.

Yesterdaynight was superb! The track fitted like a glove and it raced like a dream. It is our own Sebenco Climb! Just a few more weeks and we have an eletronic lapcounter working. I will post a vid of the racing very soon.

Greetz Mad-Ice

[infoxicated]

Looks fantastic Mad-Ice - must have taken a huge amount of time and patience to get it looking so good. Well done! :+

[guillaume]

In the video in the first post of this thread, there is kind of a rail to give direction to the car. Is it what slotracetrack means?
I can't see any in the pics above. Does that mean you have to do all the driving yourself? That must be damn hard!
Looking forward to seeing the next vid!

[blackwiggle]

The track has a slot in the center, and the car has a little peg that goes from underneath the car into the slot.
Either side of the slot in the track is a metal strip which carries electricity, the car has a metal bar or flat braided wire either side of the peg, each of those touch the metal strip and pick up power from the track, that powers the little electric motor.

See here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slot_car

There is a picture underneath where it says "related systems and developments", I had the same green car + a red Ferrari instead of the blue cooper.

[Mad-Ice]

Thanks mates. At Rob, actually not so much time, only about 100 hours with two persons. We had about two hours per tuesdaynight. Indeed you are correct Blackwiggle. At Guillaume next week I will post pics when the tracks has been laid inbetween the wood.

The reason why we did it like this is that the track is wider now and you can drift with the cars. We now have the posibility to drive with cars in the scale of 1/24 but mostly we will drive with cars in the scale of 1/32.

Next week an update to show some more.

[stin]

That`s amazing even you showed me through your PSP but still amazing to my eyes!.

You know, I do not have the patience but I have far too much to do other things, like golf, my house projects and so on!:robot

Looking forward to see more of it!:guitar

stevie:)

[blackwiggle]

After looking at this thread I thought I'd do a quick Google search too see which , if any, stores were still selling slot cars/ track etc in Sydney.

It would seem this pastime is alive and well in Sydney much to my surprise.

I found this dedicated slot car store in Artarmon in Sydney that has 2 in-store tracks that you can hire in 30min blocks, one is a 26m 6 lane digital track and the other is a 32m 8 lane Carrera track .

These guys are fully serious slot car crazies , check out their great website, they have everything you could imagine, slot car drivers heaven.
I loved the car review section especially :lol

http://www.armchairracer.com.au/track_hire.htm

[Rapier Racer]

I think it was more popular in the UK than you might think I clearly remember when I was a kid going into Toys R Us and they had a an utter load of them all along the shelf, all the different sets and cars they contained. I had 2 and F1 track set and a really track set, which I think is still up at my dads.

There is also a model shop in Edinburgh that sells all the spare parts/addition cars etc, still there now.

[Mad-Ice]

Lol Blackwiggle. Yes this is pastime is still alive indeed. I think the last few years it is becoming bigger and bigger again. There's even a worldcup from the brand NINCO. So, will this all stimulate you to go slotracing again, blackwiggle?

At RR: yes mate the UK is known for a lot of good racers and merchants that come to the main land of Europe to race, sell and buy slotcars.

Spain and Italy are the most active countries with slotracing. If you go there, you will find enough shops and places where you can race on very big tracks and rallyways. Very cool, if I will go there on holiday in the future I will have a great time for sure.

[blackwiggle]

It got my interest perked, but there is no way I could fit even a small track in my place, even temporarily, and the place that has the 2 tracks which appear the nearest to me is many KM away and on the other side of Sydney harbour, which makes it a total PITA to get to.

So I guess it will have to be memories only.

[Mad-Ice]

Well, there is always a way! I remember when I lived in a two room appartment. Once every month or two months I moved all the furniture into my bedroom and made a huge track for the weekend. So much fun!

Well anyway, some further progress on the track:

[guillaume]

Now I can see the slots! :)
We, want, videos!

[blackwiggle]

I thought those previous photos were just to see how the whole was going to look.

For some reason I thought you were going to use a router or dremel to cut the slots into the wood, then line either side of the slots with wire/tape to power the cars, so you would not need to buy & lay track.

Have you tested the track for expansion/contraction due to temperature changes?
I mean once it was fully clipped together and left for a few days ?
Before you stuck/nailed it to the base permanently?

Only reason I ask is that I remember some horror times with my 8 lane track buckling years ago because of that, and that was after I had the brads nailing it to the base.
It could look like the streets of Kyoto after an earthquake if the temperature got above a certain point.
I'd hate for you to suffer the same, it's really upsetting when or if it happens.

[Mad-Ice]

@Guillaume: vids will come soon mate!

@Blackwiggle: that will be our next project in the coming years to root the track into wood. It would be aweful if the track would look like it endured an earthquake. But yes, we tested the track before we put it in. Also the track is not even stuck or nailed, it fits just perfectly! There is a constant temperature in the room so there is no working of the wood.

Greetz Mad-Ice

[Little_Piranha]

Beautiful tracks! :)