We were always at the Bristol Hobby Center when it was on Middle St in Bristol aging myself bigtime.Then we used to hang out at Sherm's place in Forestville at the old A&P plaza on Pine st
I realized I hadn't posted on this thread since '08. We've done a lot since then. Here is a video from last November over at my friend's house. I attached my GoPro camera to the top of one of my cars. Kinda top heavy but I got used to driving it. There are other slot car videos on my youtube channel if you want to check them out.
This track was at the RCX show in Long Beach yesterday. You can race up to six cars at a time,and it only has TWO LANES! The cars have a computer chip inside that match the controller so each car runs no matter which lane you are in! It was awesome! The computer displays lap times,position,distance back from the leader. The guy showed me some of the layouts he has built,in a book he had. One is a exact replica of a Fomula 1 track. The detail was AMAZING! I'll see if he will let me take some pic's from his book today. The cars are all Scaletric. Not sure what brand the track was,but i'm pretty sure it was Scaletric also. Check out www.bigloustoys.com
Our Gasser Gang Car Club drag races in the summertime at local strips and slot races and a club members scale dragstrip in his basement when the snow is flying here in western N.Y. The strip is equipped with timers and vidio.
I hear they're going to have one at the Lemay Car Museum in Tacoma when they open it...anyone heard anything about that?
Hmm, the Long beach show doesn't look bad. When the RCX show was in Pomona (the last few years) only one time did much slot car stuff show up. Two years ago, guys from San Diego showed up with a wood oval track. That wasn't bad. I finally had someone build me a wood track (about 50" long) and "stuffed" it into a bedroom. Fast track for a small track. Large enough for 24th scale cars, but most of mine are now 32nd scale of various costs and capibilities. Mike
WOO-HOO!! I found a picture of Pit Stop Raceway!! It was located in East Toledo, OH on Starr Ave. Marty Marysville, OH
I've only owned HO stuff but back around '65 I used to go to Fitt's Photo & hobbies to race the big cars. They had a couple of fantastic layouts there. Been a long time but I think the store with the track was in Natick. I do remember the camera & hobby store was at Shoppers Worlds in Framingham.
Had a ton of fun at the "Slots O Doom" at Lucky Bobs today! Destroyed my 34 Roadster but not as bad as the 40 Ford exploding against the wall! Sent from my LG-LS980 using H.A.M.B. mobile app
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
We built our own cars and controllers. My favorite controller had one of those lantern batteries attached to just the top of the resistor on the controller, when the handle was fully up my own battery supplied the voltage in reverse. I could rip down the straight at WOT going deep into the corner and lift to have the motor reverse brake. What really pissed people off and made them ban my controller was when I added another switch to add the battery to the tracks battery on the straight. It was kinda like hitting the nitrous button. We used to wind our own motors and make our tires and everything. I went into a slot car track some years ago and the cars were so fast now I couldn't even think about driving one. It was like comparing a flat head to a modern engine.
They even had Nitrous on a TANK! Imagine a Sherman tank throwing a rooster tail hauling ass! Yup, WEP!
my first h.o. set had the cars with vibrator motors. thought i died and went to heaven when the armature motors were introduced. the nearest commercial track was in webster groves, mo. oddly enough, the building once housed a ford dealership!
Slot cars are cool!I still have my Aurora And Tyco slot cars fro thE 70s.I also have some 1/43 Carrea Go!slot car sets.The Police and Fire chief cars even have flashing lights!
We still race every Friday night in South Bend IN. I don't run slots during the summer much because I'm racing my template late model. But come fall I run at my home track and go to a few tracks in Chicago, Indy, Detroit. a few of my current cars... 2016 SuperStock chevelle by racer_dave posted Aug 8, 2016 at 2:18 PM 2016 Pony Stock Mustang by racer_dave posted Aug 8, 2016 at 2:18 PM 2016 Pony Stock Nova by racer_dave posted Aug 8, 2016 at 2:18 PM 4" NASCAR flexi by racer_dave posted Aug 8, 2016 at 2:18 PM Chevy Modified by racer_dave posted Aug 8, 2016 at 2:18 PM
Hello, Sports cars had narrow Pittman motors that fit snugly inside the bodies. Some of the favorites were the green Lotus Cars like Jim Clark drove. The cars were controlled by plastic push lever controllers that made squishing sounds as you controlled the throttle. We changed over to direct contact door bells and drill trigger contact devices that made full throttle upon depressing the lever, like a click button contact…the drivers’ area sounded like a cricket convention with the multiple clicking sounds as the sports cars went around the track. But, everyone new made their runs using the squishy up/down lever controllers. The contacts were swivel plastic guides with the two metal straps that made contact with the electrified grooves in the track. This was good for small 1/32 slotcars, but the 1/24 sizes threw too much weight round the curves and usually hopped out of the grooves. So, we utilized a separate brass rod that attached to the back of the frame and allowed the electric contacts to stay in the groove and the car could lift up around the corners. This was good for road racing, but not for drag racing…instant wheelies upon contact. So, we had to put lead weights from our fishing tackle boxes to keep the car and contacts in the groove. The motors for road racing were not good for the drags. The top winners in the drags used these larger motors Pittman DC85. Stock, the big motors were fast, but in order to be considered for top eliminator in your class, modifications had to be done to win. The main thing was to re-wrap the copper wires around the motors with larger diameter wires, but less footage of wire. Then to keep the wires from frying on the line when the electricity was applied, we had to put on clear epoxy all around the spinning armature wires. This kept the motor from exploding when all of the power was turned on to the strip. Some of our motors did not make it off the line because they would just explode from either bad wire windings, or bad epoxy coating, or not enough epoxy coatings. It was one or the other. People started to buy German bearings to replace the stock molded brass bearing housing. That improved the speeds. I was able to get some super high speed bearings that fit inside a dentist’s drill that spun at 250k per second. This made a world of difference in speed. Plus, the true bearings fit in the stock holes and made little to no sound. They were expensive, but dentists always threw away used bearings and replaced them with new, better ones as the technology expanded. So, free is better than high costs. The final motor tuning tip was to clean the copper surface of the commutator (where the brushes rub for the connection) with cleaning material and if needed, sand the copper surface smooth. The cleaning solution was mish mash as everyone had their own version. We used wintergreen/alcohol for quick drying and great smell. We tuned it until it dried off the copper surface. We also used this compound on the shaved slicks for better traction. It was sticky, but dried well before the electricity was applied. Shades of a prepped tracks like today… These motors were attached to thin brass tubing flattened on the ends to make an attachment point with the front two screws of the DC 85 motor. The fronts could be arranged any way that made it under a plastic body or if a dragster was being made, narrowed down for brazing. The axle could be more brass tubing. For our Corvette drag racer, we put on some small bearings inside the tubing for super high speed spinning. Finally some company made cast aluminum wheels with bearings inside, so that eliminated an extra brass tubing. Sewing needles inside super small brass tubes were used to mount the bodies onto this standard brass tubing frame. The dragsters had narrow front ends with the width in the back as wide as the DC 85 motor. The sports cars and gassers could have narrow front ends or totally square front ends like a stock frame. The only time a frame was seen was if a wheelie was done or the body was removed for servicing in the pits. The scene at the big name tracks like J&J had their regulars that looked at you funny when you walked in with a wooden box. It was their turf and you are being watched. When the cars we made came out of the boxes, then people would come up and look at the interesting take on racing. It was like the old, wild western movies, the new guy in town is here to make some noise… actually, these racers made a slight whizzing noise for about a second. Thanks, Jnaki
Well we have a couple places near us that seem to have a good group of folks that support them. I was interested in the drag racing end of it because it seemed more like what we used to do. The Parma cars we used to race were a little different. We bought the chassis and the body was a clear plastic you would paint and was very thin. We would put glue down going into every corner. Now the cars look like a die cast car with a motor and they are smaller....didn't seem as cool as the stuff we had. I was told nobody runs Parma type cars anymore? Was thinking of getting into it...but I'll throw my money at the real cars for the time being
loveoftiki- we still race lexan bodied cars too. we run an FCR class, a 4" NASCAR class, GTP, CanAM and some other classes.
I remember the public slot car tracks but more importantly to me I wonder what happened to Bad Bob that started this thread ? His profile says he hasn't been on here since December 2014 . I miss his contributions !
My brother and I would race slot cars with our friends in our houses. I went to a few slot car tracks growing up and always enjoyed it. Once in while we would run slot cars in the barracks. This is my cruiser. More fun than a bag of donuts.....HA! Sent from my SM-G930T using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
I had an HO track too. Once one of the motors quit. I stuck the bare wires into the socket and it really spun. It also caught on fire and I somehow got a finger tip caught between the winding and the motor case. I yelled, and Mom came back to see what was up. Naturally it was "nothing".
Hello, Just like in building hot rods or custom cars, these little bodies and motors created problems for everyone. (Until you got it dialed in correctly.) For example, the clear Lexan bodies were the perfect shape of an original car…61-62 Corvette, painting inside out for the first timer was an experiment in itself. If you wanted to get creative, you were painting backwards. The clear Lexan made it look fabulous on the outside, but on the inside, it could look awful. We learned that if a car rolls over in a corner or hits a wall at speed, then the cracks show up on the paint. So, as good body/repair people, we added more paint to fill the cracks. The next time more paint cracked as the material got thicker and thicker. So, we learned to mask off the areas we wanted a different color, had one good light spray, then dry and repeat. Two coats were the perfect amount for these lexan bodies. Roll overs, hitting the walls, pile ups, they were all taken in stride, with little to no damage to the paint. Does everyone remember the towels at the end of the strip to stop the cars? Those were the most damaging to the lexan bodies and paint, but with our new paint technology, the paint withstood the stopping/cracking at the end. Now those electric motors needed a little more experimenting and customization for those high speed dragstrips. Thanks, Jnaki
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