37 replies to this topic

[MattD]

I have been building this track for about two months, working 25-30 hours a week or so. I based almost everything on the fine tutorial Steve Ogilvie posted here last year. I had to change a little from his guidelines as my work is not to the level of Steve's, G. Gerding's and C. Dadds. Like everything I do, I managed to overcome my shortcomings and make things work.     

 

I replaced a four-lane Carrera track with this. I am hopeful that our small group will find this enjoyable and be more involved than they were with the local raceway.   

 

Thanks to Steve and to Slot Car Corner for the router bit and the pre-taped braid. That made it so easy!

 

 

 

[MattD]

Started out routing all pieces individually, then assembled it. Next time I will assemble the entire track surface and then rout it to make it fit better. I have a local CNC guy that will do it for me (cheap), but he was slow writing the program and I am impatient, so I routed it myself. No doubt the CNC work would have been perfect.  

 

 

 

[MattD]

I built the track on my old slot car table with all banks and elevation changes. Then I took it apart and built legs to raise it 20 inches from the table. I  used my engine hoist to lower the big sections to the floor (after dismantling the table under it). Then I added shoes to the bottom of the legs to make up for unevenness on this 70-year-old garage floor.

 

Used the same wiring I have used on my tracks for the last five-eight years. It is no longer all homemade. I got a Pro Motor four-lane wiring kit from eBay several years ago and it makes wiring neater and quicker than the old homemade stuff I've always done.

 

 

 

[Bill from NH]

Nice job, Matt! The track came out looking beautiful. Have fun running cars on it.

[eshorer]

Looks great! It'll last a long time. My Bob Scott build is eight years old, and is doing fine even residing under a tall, covered deck in my back yard. 

 

Enjoy!

 

Eddie

[mjsh]

Looks great.

 

How hard was the bank to do?

[MattD]

The bank and twisting of the MDF was really easy. I cut and routed a 180 curve, along with a 6' straight attached to each exit. Put a tiedown strap around it and pulled it together till I had what I wanted. Let it set for a few days and it took a natural set and I didn't have to force it hard at all to make it fit as I wanted.   

 

I found that the curved walls could be strapped and pulled into a curved shape. Let them set a few days an they would take a set. Made it much easier to fit them to the curved track.  If yuo cut a piece of MDF 20 inches wide and 8 feet long, you can probably put the middle of the piece on a sawhorse and in a week or two it will droop over a foot on each end and stay that way. I used 1/2 inch all thru except for inside corners which were two layers or 1/4 inch done one layer at a time.

 

The bank is how I got started. I cut and routed a 180, just to see if I could bank it. That was the trial to see if I could build what I wanted to build.   That worked and I went ahead with the rest of the project.    

[Slot-Racer]

Wow, that's awesome! Love it!

[Pete L.]

Matt,

 

Great work, a real beauty!!!

[dc-65x]

Great-looking track, Matt.

[Mark Johnson]

NICE!

[Garry S]

That crossover looks challenging!  What is the total length?  Any lap times?

[Jay Guard]

Great job Matt, that's going to be one fast track.  Awesome, just plain awesome!

[MattD]

Garry, the crossover is really not to hard to navigate,   Just takes a blip of the controller to get thru it smooth, and a blip and slow acceleration into the flat curve, the long straight and banked turn are easy, of course.   Faster cars need a blip going in but I have some flexis (for newbies) weighted and geared to make them easy to run and they can take the bank flat out.    The track has met my goals.    Pretty easy to drive for experienced slotters.    No coming off every lap of two, more racing than wrecking.    It still requires some car control to make good time thru the overpass, downhill straight and thru the flat curve.     

 

As to lap times I have no counter hooked up yet.     I have a DS system and made provisions for it, but we never used it with our regular play racing.   We are just a couple guys that get together and play "crash and burn"  racing.    Track  is 8 foot by 32 foot and I estimate lap length at about 65-70 feet,   Never really paid any attention to that.

[MSwiss]

It looks longer than that.

 

An easy way to measure is if you have two 10' pieces of 14 gauge wire.

 

They will probably fit nicely in the slot.

 

Start one, on the middle of the main straight, notating where you start.

 

Butt the 2nd one to the end of the first, and keep alternating obviously keeping track of the # of pieces.

 

When you get back to the main straight, and can't fit in another 10'  piece,  just measure the remaining 0',1"- 9', 11", with a tape measure.

[MattD]

Mike, what do I do when I forget how many pieces of wire I have layed down.   After 3 or 4, I'll probably forget how many I have counted.   If I write it down, I'll probably lose the paper!!!    Not that I am challenged or anything!

[Bill from NH]

Matt, put a piece of masking tape on the track each time you remove 10' of wire & sequentially number them as you go. For a greater challenge, use roman numerals. i won't bother telling you i was once an engineer.   

[Benno - SAC]

I would drink a whole bottle of beer after each piece of wire layed down. When finished, you can count the bottles 😂.

BTW: Veeery cool track! Congratulations and may you have a lot fun with it!

[Pappy]

I would drink a whole bottle of beer after each piece of wire layed down. When finished, you can count the bottles 

I like the way you think, Benno. I'm going to make it a point to measure all my friends tracks. But I'm going to use a 2' long piece of wire. That way it's easier to handle and the math is a lot simpler, just get someone to count the beer bottles, multiply by two and add a few inches. 

[Martin]

Great looking track Matt. Wish I could come and play.

 

Did we all forget Pi = 3.14 divide by 2 for the radius. Best done before the beer(s)

[don.siegel]

Very nice looking track Matt - must be fun running your vintage cars on there! 

 

What do you use for the local guys, mostly Flexis? 

 

Looks pretty professional to me, despite what you say... 

 

Don 

[MattD]

Don, I have setup some Womps and Flexis for the new guys that want to try it.   I have slowed down both these types of cars with 15k and 21K Chinese motors and gearing.  Womps (16k)  are a little slower and a good place to start.   Silicone tires and added weight.   The Flexi's have the  21K motors and are faster, but with the improved handling they are still pretty easy.   I won that bunch of anglewinder gears on Ebay a few days ago, so I am thinking of going back to 10 tooth pinions and the 33 spurs.   That should be  pretty fast but not fast enough to fly.

 

The hard bodies I have run on the local track also do fine.   They may be a little faster, but they are geared for higher speed;    All in all it's working out pretty good.

So far I have only run with a few of the guys one at a time when they happened to stop by.   This week we are going to schedule a race afternoon/early evening.   We figure to race every other week.   On the off week we will race on the Tunkel oval and dragstrip at another local guy's house.

 

All these guys are retired and the age factor and distance  was an issue with driving the 30 some miles to the track south of Louisville.   Now we can be within 8-10 miles for everybody and be home before dark.

 

I do wish I had made this track with 4 1/2, even 5 inch lane centers.    We run 3 1/4 rear tread width.   I have dropped that to 3 inches on the cars I have exclusively for this track.    

 

mb

[Isaac S.]

That great, your skilled

[Steve Neill]

Impressive and inspiring Matt!

[rvec]

Great track Matt. - Looks like a very quick circuit