Last Friday, AWDImprezaL, me and a few others discussed the possibility of building a slot car racing track. Lots of brainstorming and such has occured in the past couple days so we thought we'd bring it up here. Basicly, we'd build a fat, 4 lane slot car track. Every Friday we'd have races and drink beer (or soda for you non-drinkers and minors). Set up races with other car clubs (crap-talking and such is encouraged). There would be a lap timer to ensure fairness on that of course. Now, for the part you guys all hate...fees. This stuff costs some cash, and as much as we want to do this, we'd need to pay for it out of our own pockets (there are only a few of us funding this) We thought about possibly having a "One Time Membership Fee" of 10 dollars. This membership fee would consist of: *Lifetime Track Membership *Free rental cars *2 Beers (whatever is available that night) Also there would be a "Track Patrons Membership" which would be 15 dollars. *Lifetime Track Membership *Free rental cars *2 Beers (whatever is available that night) *You get to name one of the turns on the track!!! *First pick of rental cars (preference will be given in order of Membership) The Patrons Membership would be limited to 10 members since that seems like a feasible amount of turns to have on a track the size we are planning. Races would be held every Friday night, after Firestone. If this is something that interests you, let us know. Erik (AWDL) and I and a couple others have been hashing this over since Friday. Any ideas are also appreciated. This would be a cool way to get together for fun on Fridays instead of cruising around town wasting gas looking for streetraces, and in the winter after snow-mayhem time. (BTW, the two cold ones is a one time perk of new membership, we aren't going to dump 2 free beers per Friday per person on our wallet...) **(and seriously, 10 dollars for unlimited racing for as long as the track remains functioning and there are cars to drive, plus 2 beers that night...that is a damn steal for entertainment. It isn't like you'll probably have to pay for beer anyway, I mean, who the f*ck does that?)
/\sent a pm. I hope you guy have a better attention span than I do evertyime I try and build a track I get about halfway done let it sit for a few weeks,put it away, and repeat every couple months.
cool i am in. whats the deal w/ buying my own car? what brands will work? id this going to be at firestone or in your garage? i have a friedn who is also interested. post pics of the course.
what scale? I've got 2 4WD rally 1:32 ones that I could bring when I'm in town. but I've got my own track, so they won't be available all the time. nor will my track :biggrin: but I'm game! I vote we go larger scale. the 1:32 ones that I have take way more skill than the little hotwheels sized ones! SLOT CAR DRIFT!!
HO Scale is what we are currently shooting for. I'd love to go 1/32nd scale, but that would require us to pay alot more money. I have info on how to make track out of MDF and Rebar Tie Wire. But I really don't think we can swing that. It would require similar amounts of cash, provided we don't ruin the MDF in the process.
cool. i will start loking for a HO scale car. chux you might need to help me paint it and prep it ;-)
What type of track are you using Chux? Is that homemade (wouldn't put it past you). Seriously, I know subarus are available in 1/32nd, but the cost of that scale is much higher. And it also requires alot more space for a similar length track.
it's not homemade, but I'm thinking about making some to add to it/replace it. it's an ACX set, called 1000 lakes, I think they changed it to C3 or something though, came with 2 4WD rally cars, one subaru, one citroen. I'm not sure...but HO is smaller than 1:43...right? martin and I found a bunch of 1:43 subarus.
Yeah, HO is 1/64th scale. I'm not sure the relational size of 1/64 to 1:43, but I'm sure it is pretty close and my work. It'd be interesting to snatch up a 1:43 chassis and try it on HO track just for grins. I'm also not sure of what kind of voltage and amperage requirements a 1:43 scale car has.
http://www.hoslotcars.com/cgi-bin/s...&sort5=-1&sort6=-1&sort7=-1&sort8=-1&sort9=-1 subaru style I'd love to join you guys, but I'm not going to be in the twin cities a whole lot and don't really want to drive 5 hours to play with slot cars and drink beer. This website has a lot of cars. Have fun
HO track...:laugh: I'd just wreck everyone out around the corner with that U-Haul if I could get it to drift.
no, I doubt that 1/64 and 1/43 are close, I put a 1/25 body on a 1/28 r/c chassis, and the 1/32 slot cars are noticably smaller than that, they're pretty different.
it might work, but I bet they'll be too wide, won't be able to pass. I found some 1:64 die cast subaru models, I bet you could take them apart, paint the windows black, and mount the subaru body to an HO slot car chassis...they'd be heavy....but sweet! I've seen a few lots of 1:43 track pieces on ebay I've only seen a few 4-lane sets, and they're all complete sets, big bucks. if you really want to do it that way (which would be sweet) I think it'll have to be custom to be cost-effective. I think something like this would be sweet! http://cgi.ebay.com/AFX-Super-International-Race-Set-In-The-Box-W-Extras_W0QQitemZ6055225353QQcategoryZ2619QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
The Super International set is exactly what we've been looking at. Get two of them, run a 50' 4 lane course Mount it to a 5.25'X12' MDF board and call it done.
Wow, this 4-lane slot track sounds like a pretty major investment ($$, time, AND space!) Maybe you should stage it out a bit; start with a 6- or 8-lane "dragstrip" (just straight pieces of ordinary 2-lane you could pick up at garage sales, mounted side-by-side). If enough people showed up regularly for THAT, and got bored with drag racing, you'd have a solid user base to start working on a road course and know you weren't wasting your time. I haven't had much luck finding HO-scale Subies, either. I did, however, find a "SuperDeformed" blue 22B R/C car; one of those tiny things with no battery in them, just a capacitor that you "charge" on the base unit. (I can't find it online, but it was less than $10 at Target or Shopko or someplace). You could race those on anything from the kitchen table with telephone books as obstacles, to something really impressive and elaborate like this: http://blog.airdrop.org/archives/2003_09.html (scroll down to the "Bit Char-G Racetrack Complete" entry) Anyway, I don't mean to hijack the HO-scale slot-car discussion; just throwing some alternate ideas out there to ponder. If the slotcar thing takes off, I've got a wicked AFX widebody CanAm Corvette that I could fix up...
Here's a neat trick I invented back when I was a kid (this was WAAAAY before "Drifting" was even a term, but you did see lots of powerslides and "Rockford turns" on TV). Put small pieces of Scotch tape on the rear tires, covering 50-75% of the gripping surface. This lets you do burnouts, spinouts, and "drifts" with ease (and also requires a lot more finesse to stay on the track). Everybody tries to improve the grip of their cars for maximum speed without flying off the track, but personally I had a *lot* more fun "drifting". What was really funny was if you got on the gas too hard around a corner, you'd whip a full 180, and the contacts would be touching the metal rails again... but if course the polarity was now backwards, so the motor would run backwards. So you could do an actual spinout into a reverse-polarity "Rockford turn", snapping it into another 180 and be facing forward again! (As long as the guide pin didn't pop out of the slot)
Yeah, I have one of those mini Subaru r/c cars and I also have a STI X-Mod The X-mods would be alot of fun too, but they cost more.
I don't have a car to race. I could spectate though. If there's an accident, I'm outta there. Don't want the cops to add to the mess.
We will be buying the track this week. Hopefully next weekend we might have it. Not promising anything tho We will be starting small. 25' 4 lane track. No worries on the car thing...there will be 4 cars. -Jason
yea, I think everybody pitching in for a set of cars is a much better idea. if you had you're own, then we get into modifications (yes, they can be done, and yes, they'll help!), and inspections, and ugh......let's just keep the playing field as level as we can.
