10 replies to this topic

[Mark Crowley]

I was at RIR last night playing on the king and one of the guys hit a wall and flew way off the track.  We joked about soft walls and it dawned on me that I remember reading that Swiss uses soft walls.  I found some threads on soft walls but nothing better than the rubber base most tracks use.

Are there some magic "Swiss" walls?

Mark

[John C Martin]

The stuff at Tracy's track in whitehouse is the best I've seen .it's a slick surface with a thin foam base ..if the wall is to soft the front tires on Retro's will grap that soft foam wall and sometimes bend the front axle or worse .i want to slide off the wall not stick in the wall..

[MSwiss]

I was at RIR last night playing on the king and one of the guys hit a wall and flew way off the track.  We joked about soft walls and it dawned on me that I remember reading that Swiss uses soft walls.  I found some threads on soft walls but nothing better than the rubber base most tracks use.

Are there some magic "Swiss" walls?

Mark

Hi Mark,

Luckily I found my last long spiel on the subject and have added it below.

 

The only things  I'll add is that rubber coving is probably better than nothing, but I question the theory the curve on the bottom ejects the car without damage.

 

If the car is out of the slot, is it sliding along the track low enough to really catch the curved part?

 

Or is it just airborne and clearing the wall in flight?

 

Since the below post, we've been racing Group F wing cars weekly, and the Lexan© wall in the Deadman is working great.

 

Big noise from cars ridering into it, full speed , but no damage.

 

I'll be adding it to the Lead-on, where the thin white vinyl stuff folding over, is a problem occasionally.

 

The cut-n-paste;

 

The two types of non-clear soft walls are siding products that are approximately .047" thick. They work great at car protection, but are on the thin side.
 
A negative is shorter marshals, reaching cars all the way to the inside, can fold them over and they eventually crack and break. They can be repaired with duct tape, but not a super-great look.
 
I've already expounded on the positives in a previous post, but I missed one. They are thin enough for a car to go partially through. It's happened 3 times.
 
At the 2006 Nats, Beuford went through the bank wall at about 75 mph, on blue, passing Gugu on the outside, with a dying motor on yellow. I carefully extracted him and he went on to win the heat, and the race.
 
At a wing car, points race, Ron Van Wagnen, again with a G7 car, got ridered into the 90 wall. Again, no damage.
 
Finally Sano Dave, practicing by himself, took his Open G12 scale car, through the bank wall. As I was pulling him out, he informed me he had brain farted and forgot to put his guide nut back on after a ride height change. LOL.
 
The white, thin stuff is very affordable, a buck or a buck and a quarter a foot.
 
One type of clear I have is a Lucite product called something like Luc-Tuff. It's .093" thick and ten times stronger than regular Lucite. It's more expensive, but still fairly affordable. But, it will crack if you lean on it too hard while reaching to get a car too quickly. I use it mostly on the inside turns of my flat track for visibility, so the strength isn't too big of an issue, and it has served me well.
 
The other type of clear I have is genuine Lexan©.
 
It's used for better visibility on my King in the Deadman and Donut. It's mounted with a little bit of give, and despite it being twice as thick as the white stuff, it seems to be as effective at protecting cars.
 
In the deadman, it's on the outside, so there is very little leaning on it. In the donut, it is fully exposed to marshals and has held up without any cracking or breaking.
 
The good news is that on the first day I had it up, a bigger than average eight-year old, autistic child, sat on it, without any damage.
 
The only negative of Lexan©/polycarbonate is the cost. About $75 for a 4' x 4' sheet.

[Dennis David]

I would think that savings from car damage would make that up pretty quick but then it would require a track owner that cared about customer damage that was not suffered by the track itself. Not sure how many of those are really out there :-(

[Ramcatlarry]

I have bounced off of Mike's wall enough to say that it works fine for his tracks.

 

When I took over the JK/Raceworld Raceway operation, several of the tracks needed repairs and painting. One of the rental tracks had an MDF wall perforated by whisperjets.  After bondoing the walls back solid and examining the extent that simple cove molding did and did not help the situation, I tried thinking how to make a better wall.

 

Standard cove molding is 4 inches wide and easily cut down to two strips two inches wide.  I used the rounded edge pieces on the widest turns where the drift of the cars never allowed the edge to lift the car and blended in the rest.  In order to make the walls "softer" ,  I found sheets of tool box liner at the local hardware store. Foam sheets/rolls about 1/8" thick...fairly smooth so that it would glue.  The perforated sheets did not stick well.  Cut this into 1" wide strips.  I ended up with regular cove molding glue to mount it all.  Identify where the marks in the existing wall has been and glue the foam to the painted MDF wall.  Glue the TWO inch cove molding over the top of the softer foam and extend it by another 6" or to suit your desires.

 

The tracks that I have done still show my walls in good condition after ten years.  The Ogilvie Hillclimb is at Bill Pinches' in Florida and the Dadds King and Scorpian were last seen in (?)Virginia.  Some of the others are around that I have lost location today.The cove molding washes well with whitewall tire cleaner.

 

Saved a lot of my time repairing rental cars and replacing damaged bodies on my fleet as well as my racing customers.

[JohnnySlotcar]

Mike's soft walls are "The Bomb!". Errant "Scuds" taking you into the wall  will allow continued racing!

[Rob Voska]

Wood under the track surface for support and soft above the track surface.  I put my 1/24 ES through Mike's wall on the flat track when it launched over the counter.  No damage to chassis & finished the race without problem.  To be honest the last two years at CL I just check cars for flat after the race but they are always straight.

[Buffalo 66]

Walls, soft walls? I launch right over those. I need soft floors or agile corner marshals with goalie pads & gloves.

[Dave Crevie]

It is pretty rare for a car to go over a wall at Mike's unless it was already airborne. The curve keeps

it from folding toward the outside. If I had to repair a car each time it hit a wall at Chicagoland, I would

have had to give up slot racing long ago. I could not afford it. 

[MSwiss]

Hi Mark,
Luckily I found my last long spiel on the subject and have added it below.
 
The only things  I'll add is that rubber coving is probably better than nothing, but I question the theory the curve on the bottom ejects the car without damage.
 
If the car is out of the slot, is it sliding along the track low enough to really catch the curved part?
 
Or is it just airborne and clearing the wall in flight?
 
Since the below post, we've been racing Group F wing cars weekly, and the Lexan© wall in the Deadman is working great.
 
Big noise from cars ridering into it, full speed , but no damage.
 
I'll be adding it to the Lead-on, where the thin white vinyl stuff folding over, is a problem occasionally.
 
The cut-n-paste;
 
The two types of non-clear soft walls are siding products that are approximately .047" thick. They work great at car protection, but are on the thin side.
 
A negative is shorter marshals, reaching cars all the way to the inside, can fold them over and they eventually crack and break. They can be repaired with duct tape, but not a super-great look.
 
I've already expounded on the positives in a previous post, but I missed one. They are thin enough for a car to go partially through. It's happened 3 times.
 
At the 2006 Nats, Beuford went through the bank wall at about 75 mph, on blue, passing Gugu on the outside, with a dying motor on yellow. I carefully extracted him and he went on to win the heat, and the race.
 
At a wing car, points race, Ron Van Wagnen, again with a G7 car, got ridered into the 90 wall. Again, no damage.
 
Finally Sano Dave, practicing by himself, took his Open G12 scale car, through the bank wall. As I was pulling him out, he informed me he had brain farted and forgot to put his guide nut back on after a ride height change. LOL.
 
The white, thin stuff is very affordable, a buck or a buck and a quarter a foot.
 
One type of clear I have is a Lucite product called something like Luc-Tuff. It's .093" thick and ten times stronger than regular Lucite. It's more expensive, but still fairly affordable. But, it will crack if you lean on it too hard while reaching to get a car too quickly. I use it mostly on the inside turns of my flat track for visibility, so the strength isn't too big of an issue, and it has served me well.
 
The other type of clear I have is genuine Lexan©.
 
It's used for better visibility on my King in the Deadman and Donut. It's mounted with a little bit of give, and despite it being twice as thick as the white stuff, it seems to be as effective at protecting cars.
 
In the deadman, it's on the outside, so there is very little leaning on it. In the donut, it is fully exposed to marshals and has held up without any cracking or breaking.
 
The good news is that on the first day I had it up, a bigger than average eight-year old, autistic child, sat on it, without any damage.
 
The only negative of Lexan©/polycarbonate is the cost. About $75 for a 4' x 4' sheet.

Just bringing this up, to make it easy for another raceway owner to spot, who e-mailed me looking for info on "soft wall technology".

[MSwiss]

"I'll be adding it to the Lead-on, where the thin white vinyl stuff folding over, is a problem occasionally."
 
Just a follow-up, the Lexan© has worked out great in the Lead-on.
 
It saves the cars, as I knew it would, from seeing them previously, getting ridered into the Deadman, without damage.
 
But I've been real pleased how it has survived the constant leaning on it, from people putting cars back in on Black lane.