Art & Inspiration Drag Racing in the Basement?

Jive-Bomber submitted a new blog post:

Drag Racing in the Basement?

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I'm really liking that roadster pickup on the cover!
I've got an Eldon Top Eliminator drag set from the mid sixties, but this homebuilt set up looks pretty cool. Thanks for sharing!

 

COOL!!!
Looks like one was for sale here a few years ago:
https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/eldon-1-24th-scale-drag-strip-race-set.958860/

 

Slot car drag racing was never stronger than it is today.
There's a shop in Buena Park (CA) that has three road courses and a full scale drag strip. They have several scheduled races and people can run their cars any time the raceway is open.

The "Top Fuel" & "Funny Cars" are actually quicker than their full sized counter parts (in total seconds).

Mike

 

when I was in middle school in the early 80's my best friend had a a drag race set up similar to that. It had been his dad's back in the 60's. Not sure what the scale was but they were a little smaller than 1/25 model car. Pretty sure his wasn't home built. We wrapped scotch tape around the slicks to make the tires spin all the way down the track!

 

That's just flat-out cool-as-shit! Back around jr. High/ High School I modified my old "TCR" slotless track system with an improvised drag strip section. But it was nothing as good as this. Now I know what to buy/make to get my little boy off his Thomas the Train kick...! (although I recently saw a youtube hack /mod video where a guy modifies his electric Thomas trains for super high speed)

 

Got my ho scale drag strip last year.... Can't wait to set it up and test some????.... X amount of slot cars I have in my stash...
Most are vintage Auroras and A/FX.... The others are Auto World and Johnny Lightning... All the cars have the "pancake" style chassis...

 

@Jive-Bomber Jay - Cool stuff!

We never ran any "Drag Racing" slot cars ... but in the late '60s & early '70s, I used to go with my father and some of his hot rodder friends to a slot car track here in the Bay Area.

I still have most of my father's old Gar-vic and hand-built brass chassis cars ... and a bunch of Tradeship MK-70 Micro Motors.

We also raced 1:24 Eldon cars at home ...

Me & my Eldon "garage track" (circa 1970) ... with the HEMI32 coupe in the background​

I still have all my old Eldon sets ... and several years ago started purchasing several other Eldon sets off of ebay... including a mint-in-box Eldon #9822 "TOP ELIMINATOR DRAG STRIP SET":

​

... I'm really bummed that I sold it ... and I hate @Rolleiflex & @Moriarity

 

I still have a bunch that I need to take pictures of and post those on here....
This one rocks!

 

I have a boxes of Strombecker track with enough straightaway to easily make a scale 1/4 mile strip. My son and I get it out every few years and have it going until my wife gets tired of stepping over it and makes us put it away. The bad part is all of my cars have 50+ year old dried up rock hard tires on them that won't allow them to get any traction.

BTW, if anyone wants to buy some Eldon track & transformers, I have a few pieces I'll let go for cheap.

 

I'm a Strombecker guy as well. I saved up when I was a kid some serious money to buy the chicane section of track. When I went to hook it up to the track I didn't know that you had to have separate entry and exit sections for the chicane. Hobby store never brought any in and I STILL those two sections! Do you have any you'd let go?

 

I've been into Aurora T-Jet slots since I was a youngster in the early 1960's. Currently have a 4-lane track with each lane containing 33 feet of track. Here are some of my cars, including some newer Johnny Lightning pieces.

Jim

 

Hey JB,

That set that Moriarity has for sale is tempting. That would be a great thing to do on our rainy day lockdowns, here in So Cal. (We just had a two day blaster that is causing/caused all of those rain related problems.) We got involved in slot cars when my friend got a simple set for Christmas. It expanded as we became more involved. Back then, we made our own dragstrip with as many straight lanes as we could get our hands on for our own version of drag racing.

In So Cal, there are no basements where we lived, so the flat wooden floors of the old houses or the linoleum flooring of the bigger kitchens were the place to race. Sometimes, when the kitchen was being used, we went to the long living room (carpeted room.) Luckily, the 60’s carpeting was usually flat and that did not mess up the connecting tracks. It was fun expanding that original stock set up, mainly with our own modified race cars for each class.

Thanks for bringing up those great times and memories for us…it was a blast during those times.

Jnaki

Here is a post from 2016 on our involvement in slot car racing, slot car builds and drag racing.

Hello,

Back in 1963-64, we had our real cars all fixed up, cruised many local hot spots and we all started college, so money was tight for more hop up stuff for our cars. The drag racing scene was fading from our memories as the costs kept rising for repairs and more go fast goodies. So, we turned to slot cars after my friend got a kit for Christmas. We spent hours of racing these little cars on the winding tracks. We finally decided to make a straight track all the way across the room from several kits, thus creating a drag strip. Using the up down push controllers and stock sports cars, we started our own Long Beach Dragstrip.

It was fun while that lasted, but after visiting a hobby shop called J&J Raceway (or raceshop) in North Long Beach, we got hooked. It did not cost very much to buy parts and make our own cars for the sports car circuit or heavily modified rails/sports cars for the high power dragstrip at this fabulous hobby shop.

We met the heroes of the time, Bob Braverman and Gene Husting. They were about 15+ years older than us, but so much wiser on these builds. They were a wealth of knowledge and were very friendly to us novices asking for advice on speed secrets, epoxy, wire windings, German bearings, thin solder attachments, etc. Their cars were out of reach of 95% of the rest of the racers as they were the quickest around. We had fun building these cars and the creativity was in full bloom. We did the epoxy thing, got super small bearings for a smoother motor, and made our own frames.

We used long brass tubing with rolled thin aluminum bodies, shorter full tube frames for the sports and gasser classes. There was the wooden tackle box with multiple compartments, tons of extra parts, rewound motors, epoxy tubes, soldering guns, smelly solder and flux, oily rags and that wonderful wintergreen/alcohol smell that permeated the whole box. If you had several cars, there was usually a pull out compartment just the right size for 1/24 models. Brass frames, motors, they all fit inside these wonderful wooden boxes. The cost was still less than full size car hop up goodies.

We took all of that advice from the top two guys and made our own versions for both types of racing. Our weekly racing took place nearby in a smaller road racing tuning shop, but once a month, we ventured up to J&J to see how well we would do against the hard core racers, We would always come back smiling and would have tales to tell, sometimes with blown up motors and cracked bodies. Those were the times…what happened to all of my stuff?

Since it had been years ago for any use, I decided that I would give it all to this neighborhood kid that did not have much. I gave him a 12v transformer, a few long straight tracks and all of my old cars in the wonderful wooden box. His eyes lit up like Christmas in July…did he turn into a drag racer/car nut? Who knows, he might be fishing off a local pier using that box for a seat.

Thanks,

Jnaki

JNAKI, AUG 8, 2016EDITDELETE!REPORT!

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I remember my father bought a big ugly green dodge station wagon back in the mid 60's (think Clark Griswald family truckster). When he bought it at the dealership, they were giving away a promotional electric drag strip if I remember correctly. It had the track and 2 hand held bases that had a 4 speed gear shifter with a reverse. You had to run through the 4 gears to get the cars all the way down the track. When you got done with the run, you put it in reverse and backed 'em up behind the tree and did it again. If you didn't shift into 2nd or 3rd or 4th at the right time, the car stalled. We played with that thing for days! Wish I had it....don't know what happened to it.


Edit: Just researched it....was called the Plymouth Shutdown Slot Car Track. Found a youtube video on it.

 

Here is an HO '33 Willys coupe I made in about 1970 to enter an Auto World mail in contest. Challenge was to make an HO dragster. This is a fiberglass body I made from a wood carved model and plaster mold taken from that carving. Chassis is soldered brass with brass steering front axle, all chrome plated. Front wheels are 1/8" x 1/4" ball bearings with O-ring tires. Motor is Tyco can motor with custom gear train. It had a broken lead wire when I got it back from the competition so it never got judged since it had to run. I never had a track and have never run it. It won't be that fast but would be hoot to watch. I would like to make an HO drag strip/LSR track some day. All it takes is time and money!!

 

I love it!!!!

 

We used to soak our old, hard rubber tires in boiling water with a dash of Winter Green, this is an outside only job!

 

I was into slots as a kid, and this year we bought my 4 year old his first set. I’ve played with it 10 times more than him so far! I want that eldon drag strip bad, we used to drag race slots when I was young


Sent from my iPhone using H.A.M.B.

 

I've still got my slot car and controller out in the file cabinet in the shed but never did the drag thing. We went to the places with tracks in either Yakima or Pasco Wa. Pile 4 or 5 guys and our race car kits in a car and off we went.

 

A bunch of drag races from the New England area would gather at Bob Ellison's house during the winter months in the early seventies for slot car drag races. Bob ran the Ellison & McGarvey Willys and later was part owner of the Boston Strangler funny cars. The 1/25th scale fifty five foot drag strip was made of four foot sections of particle board. Every Saturday night they set up the track in the kitchen of Bob's house. It ran from the kitchen through the hall way to the living room. The shut down was only about eight feet into some blankets. Everybody built their own cars starting with brass tubing and model bodies. It was great fun for a few years, I even got a mention in Drag News, when I won a big race there.

 

I lost track of slot car drag racing since the late 60s. Back then the hot 1/24th scale setup was a Pittman 95 or Ram 950 motor rewound to 1/2ohm, sponge rubber model airplane tires epoxied to aluminum rims, 1/16" thick magnesium rails. ETs had just dropped below 1 second. What is the state of the art and performance nowadays?

 

Here's one more of the ones I have....
It's a Johnny Lightning body that sits on a vintage "dated" 1971 A/FX solid rivet chassis....
It has the super 2 magnets and a "mean green" arm..

 

I seriously miss hanging out with hi school buddy's rip'n slot car's till 3:am.. This is all I have after selling my collection in 05

 

Just got this one not long ago... It's a new release from Auto World...
I haven't modified this one....yet.

 

The drag strip set I bought last year...

 

Last one for this evening....
Not sure if this one is from Johnny Lightning er Auto World....

 

The first Hot Wheels

 

We did the drag race thing when my son was little. We had stock, modified and top fuel classes depending on the style of car. The old original ones were stock, AFX were modified and the newer mega motors were the fastest. Used talcum powder for burn outs and disconnected the last several sections of track for the shut down area. Still had to use a pillow to catch the fast ones.

 

Wow, that's got me beat...
Thanks for posting those!!!!!