42 replies to this topic

[MarkH]

I thought I would post here as well. This is my new track. It was designed in Solidworks and has been under construction since the first week or so of May 2013. Working on the relay boards now. I will have a switch to reverse the direction of the track keeping the polarity correct. It uses a bunch of relays so hoping to have those board done early this week. Later this week the drivers station panels will be completed and hooked up. This will put me on schedule to power up and test Thanksgiving weekend.

 

The track is 106ft long. The banked turn (T1) is at 28deg. T2 is at about 4deg. T3 is uphill at around 5deg (no banking). The doughnut is at 8deg and the lead on turn starts at zero and goes on to the main straight at 2deg.

 

[Dominator]

Love the design and simplicity

[dc-65x]

Very awesome track. I really like it.

[TG Racing]

Great layout.  What kind of cars do you plan on running?

[Champion 507]

Wow, very nice! Well done

 

I was just in Kirkwood a little over 3 weeks ago.

[Ricky Vegas]

Incredible!  Best way to spend a Thanksgiving weekend; testing a new track!

[MarkH]

Great layout.  What kind of cars do you plan on running?

 

We mostly run flexi and mini-can motors at Gateway Slot Racing Association. Bodies tend to lean towards more scale looking GTP, Can-Am and LMP. I do intend to give my G12 wing car a shot, that should be fun. After the first of the year it will be in the regular rotation of the club. Also I intend to hold, with two other tracks perhaps more, enduro races about every six weeks or so as a year long series. Looking at a bit of a twist on the format of that but we most likely will run flexi GTP and Hawk7 motors.

[Tex]

Very cool track; I'm jealous!

[MarkH]

All it takes is a lot of planning, to be somewhat crazy, a bucket of sweat, lots of ibuprofen, a wonderful bride and some good friends spread out over several months.

 

My bride says I "..Clarke things up.." from the movie Christmas Vacation. That is,,,, why put two strands of lights up when you could cover the whole house.

[911GT3]

Looks like a nice track.  Hope you have more fun racing on it than you did building it. 

[MarkH]

It should be a blast to run on.

As far as the work goes, some was fun such as: the planning, cutting out the main track surface pieces, bolting together in the flat, routing the slots/gains, pulling the banked turns and painting. These were some of the key points that stand out. BUT, when the stripes and the distance markers where completed, I have to admit there was great deal of satisfaction and I did not even do that work. 

[SlotStox#53]

Very jealous That is one sweet looking track you got there ENJOY!!

[MarkH]

I think I mentioned earlier I will be racing this in both directions with the flip of a switch. Here are the relay boards. The small one is to reverse the dead strip for Lap Master and the larger one reverses the power after the drivers panel. This keeps the controller at the correct positive polarity so no damage.

 

 

 

 

Here is the train wreck work area. Believe it or not, it is organized to easily reach everything I needed.

 

 

I should be installing and doing the final diodes and wires after the tree goes up this weekend.

[Tex]

Those relay boards look GREAT. I don't understand electrical wiring, so seeing it all laid out logically and with ROOM to easily SEE how things are connected, well... it just looks GREAT.

[Pappy]

Extremely Nice! That would be a great track to have a 24 hour endurance race on. 

[slotbaker]

Great looking track with plenty of room at drivers station.

 

Nicely laid out boards too, but not sure why you need so many solenoids, and why you need to reverse the dead strips.

 

It is possible using a 3 position switch, and swapping the polarity between the solenoid and braid, but each lane needs to be wired independantly.

 

Also, we run our track in reverse direction using dead strips, and don't need to do anything with them.

[MarkH]

A 24 hour race has been tossed around. Not sure when that would be or the format.

[MarkH]

Great looking track with plenty of room at drivers station.

 

Nicely laid out boards too, but not sure why you need so many solenoids, and why you need to reverse the dead strips.

 

It is possible using a 3 position switch, and swapping the polarity between the solenoid and braid, but each lane needs to be wired independantly.

 

Also, we run our track in reverse direction using dead strips, and don't need to do anything with them.

 

With the extra Relays I only have to throw one switch and the whole system reverses. As far as the dead strip, Carsten was specific this be the case, reversing the polarity, because the computer would read laps incorrectly. Not sure if it would count backwards or just not be stable. None the less, he knows how it is supposed to work so..............

 

What scoring system are you using?

[slotbaker]

OK, fair enough.

 

We're using an old system from the 80s designed and built by one of our local track builders, Garry Johnson.

It runs on the old antiquated Amiga computer but is still one of the best, and is still used in Australia by most of our commercial tracks.

The lap counter triggers when the dead strips are shorted out by the car going accross them. So it doesn't matter which way the car is going to short them out.

[MarkH]

Ahh, that dead strip does function differently than Lap Master which puts 5 volts to each lane. The computer then reads voltage change as the cars go over. If I were using a LED Light Bridge it would make no difference to the scoring side.

[slotbaker]

[MarkH]

Friday, with some great help, the power drops were pulled and hooked up. Sat was a 13hr work day. I built the drivers panels and pulled wires. There are three circuits left to hook up. There is a 16:15hrs power up target today. Should be no problem to meet that.

 

 

 

[Pappy]

Looks like a lot of attention is being paid to detail. Love it! 

[CruzinBob]

Absolutely gorgeous, extremely well thought out...WTH?!  Reminds me of a guy named Doug Shepard!

 

Nice reporting also.  Crazy but effective wiring!

[MarkH]

Well I killed the power up target. Low power test passed (3 amp power supply) on each lane and scoring. That was 7:45hrs. At 11:40hrs the 120ac power was run to the track and full power test also passed with no issues. Just have to hook up the tire cleaning station at both ends of the drivers panel. I ran out of wire, go figure. The track still needs glue to run a car at full speed but I need to throughly clean everything in the room, mount the monitors and run their cables before that. 

Should be finished by the weekend. Going to take it a but easy to let my body recover from the hard 4 day blast of work. Final pictures to follow.