Slot Cars

[Lusiphur]

So I turned the big 5-0 this year, and what present does my wife pull out of her bag of tricks, but to find me a classic AFX original Slot car, that I may have mentioned in passing and a somewhat busted up 1971 AFX track.

Wow, talk about a flash from the past!

I am in I.T. and I used to really love video gaming, but lately it's just regurgitating the same crap over and over and over again, and finding ways to force the player to spend ridiculous money on season passes and other add-ons.

As such, this has been a total refresh of my indoor fun factor. Kids today just have no clue how freaking cool this stuff is. You have to maintain both the track and cars so it's like being a mechanic for a mini car world.

On to the Madness

So my wife found and bought me a Chevy Cheetah [Which is one of the most awesome and ridiculous real cars ever made]
and I proceeded to match it with a Ferrari Dino
She also bought a Jackie Stewart 1971 AFX Track.

These are what are called pancake cars, as they have 3 gears on the top of the chassis that are attached to the armature [electric motor] which in turn spin the rear differential.

And here are my 2 awesome ones.

I was able to modify the track and add some pieces to fill in this raised space I have in my home office.
[Yes I still have almost every stuffed animal I ever received as a kid, whatever!! lol ]

and after sourcing some parts to fix what was not working, here we go.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cNW0ruOcI4

So this success prompted me to start to rebuild a larger track similar to what I had as a kid. When I first moved to PA, unfortunately all of my track and cars were lost in the shuffle.
It's quite a shame as I had some great stuff.

I have a foosball table in our finished basement, so I figured I could use that as a table. I got a 4' x 8' piece of plywood. Reinforced it with the 2" x 3" wood and added pieces to prevent it from being knocked off the foosball table as well as being able to lift and move it if needed.

The result is 62' of track with the most recent MegaG AFX cars on the Tomy AFC track called the Giant Raceway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYFryZsXgwE


Since I know I am kind of the average age here, how many of you used to have slot cars, and/or still do.
BTW, Ebay is an amazing source for everything you need for this

 

[user_deleted]

david: that is a great looking cave you have there. here's my slot-car story: i was about 7 so this had to be 1960 or so. i grew up extremely poor....used shoes...used clothing....washed house windows and cars in the neighborhood to earn money for groceries...you get the picture. so getting this for Christmas was huge. it had to be the first slot car track ever designed and manufactured. was white plastic track....huge spool of round 1/8th inch OD copper tubing that you pressed into the track grooves once the track was assembled...and 2 cars which was a jag xk120 and an mg-td. the whole thing was powered up by a pair of 6 volt ray-o-vac dry cells that came with the entire setup. pair of little hand controllers....cars were about 6" long....and to a kid my age it was pure magic. i suspect my dad had to save up a few years to buy it. have you ever seen anything like that? just curious.

 

[Lusiphur]

Wow

Ive seen a-lot of slot car tracks but nothing like you just described. Id remember a white track
Also The cars are 2-3 times larger than what I posted.
Sounds really cool
Ill have to do some internet searches to see if I can find any pictures

 

[Cooter]

Well, that escalated quickly:black_eyed:

Dang Lusiphur, the memories came flooding back with the first pic! I also had broke hippie parents so it was mowing lawns at 9 years old that got me my first tiny AFX track. Just an oval with a 360 loop. I could launch those suckers so far off the track there was dents in the wall

Never heard of the track you had Lunatic? Sounds safe... lol. I'm going to go Google-fu it and check it out:up:

 

[user_deleted]

that would be great if you find anything else. i can remember it like it was yesterday. the cars had a pair of braided copper brushes that hung down on the front to pick up the track current....pair of little pins on bottom of each car to hold them in the track groove...and a pair of these powering it up. they actually lasted a few hours if you didn't abuse the hand controller.

 

[njloco]

You have the age mixed up, when you were seven, there was no electricity !

But really, very cool, I remember spending a lot of time racing those things. Now I'll predate John, we used to set up a straightaway down the hallway, we lived in the projects of East New York. We would take the old iron heavy garbage pails (the ones with the little foot step to open the top)and put pillows in front of them to catch the Lionel engines at the end of the track, in other words, we would drag race with just the engine.

Good videos, the stuffed dolls look like they're watching the race.

You have a Lamb chop !

 

[wickedchop]

We we're poor as well, lived in an apartment above my grandparents garage (my mother would later have burned it down making candles in the early 70's) we always had some embarrassing car, the Johnson's had a Lincoln, their children got new Honda dirtbikes for Xmas and wore Nike's. My sneakers were hand me downs or from a crappy shoe store called Fayva, bicycles got picked from the garbage and I learned to sand em down and spray paint them. Somehow in 1974 my dad saved enough of his hard earned money to buy me an AFX figure eight track and those two cars. Damn if I wasn't right in the middle of the Baja 1000 as my tiny hands held that Ford Bronco, and as I oogled that Chevy Nomad I was the baddest guy on the street in my mind! As I grew older there was a hobby shop that had probably 300 linear feet of a road course 6 lanes wide of what I believe to be 1/32 or 1/24 slot cars. I remember they had wide foam tires and the braided copper contacts as John spoke of. I never did get one of those cars, they were quite out of our price range. Thanks for initiating this thread. Mega cool memories that kids today just won't have......

 

[airbozo]

HO Slot cars...

When I lived in Colorado many moons ago, several of the bars in the Boulder, Longmont, Louisville area hosted race night different nights of the week. I went to one, won a couple of races and when I found out there was free food and drinks involved I demolished everyone that showed up. I won pretty much every race I entered, so I was asked to run the races and they would feed me and slide me drinks for my effort.

I started designing the tracks based on real tracks around the country and added something unique for each bar. I ran the races for about a year and handed it off to another girl that got pretty good. I was into the HO slot cars for many years and have had several cars since I was very young. I got my first cars by digging them out of the trash and fixing them. I even learned how to rewind the motors, but they didn't last long.

I now have about 40 cars, about 15 of those are mainly for spare parts. I also have boxes and boxes of track. High bank corners, loops, and another box of just elevation connectors, guard rails, flags and such. I can create several very long 4 lane courses. When I met my wife, my apartment in Bong Leach was one big racecourse with select seating in the proper locations for car retrieval.

I've modified several of my controller plug-in plates to allow one power pack per lane. This prevents someone from either intentionally or unintentionally causing you to wreck by letting off on the power while the other person is in a corner or heading for one (one of the first tricks I used to win every race).

Here are a few of my cars (old style AFX):

New style (much faster and magnets in the bottom of the chassis to hold the cars on the track, even upside down):

 

[njloco]

Love those Chevy's, very cool business or job to have, especially when one is young or, even old for that matter !

 

[Lusiphur]

I love the Javelin, I need to find one of those.
I have the Light blue #2 car.
The Chevy Nomad is super cool as well.

 

[BuellyBagger]

I remember my tyco slot car track. It had a high bank turn(like vertical) , one of the crossover spots where the cars could hit each other and one or two bridges. This would've been 1990-1993. Hours and hours I spent tinkering with the track and trying to find ways to make my car go faster than my sister's. Good times!

 

[konarider94]

I love the Javelin, I need to find one of those.
I have the Light blue #2 car.
The Chevy Nomad is super cool as well.

That light blue #2 car looks to be a porsche 917. Really cool history surrounding that car. They just had a special about it on the new grand tour episode.

 

[Cooter]

^^^ Did you see when James May was standing next to it? It was lower than his kneecaps!

 

[konarider94]

^^^ Did you see when James May was standing next to it? It was lower than his kneecaps!

 

[BuellyBagger]

Held the le mans distance record until 2010!

 

[Lusiphur]

Damn that's cool

 

[Lusiphur]

A little bit of an update.

I picked up a classic Shadow and a Ford GT

I also snagged an AMX Javelin.

I am actually mounting all of the non Thunderjet bodies on short Mega G+ chassis. They are super fast and very low maintenance. The magnets keep them glued to the track.

Last, I found a pretty cool AR Smart Phone enabled Pit stop. Here is the original AFX You Tube video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnTzA8LcBgo&feature=youtu.be

 

[Cooter]

Heck ya! You have great taste in cars man That pit stop is cool

 

[outthere]

We have a track that hasn't been up in years. Cars are 1/32. My father bought us a set up in 1958. The track was stainless. Hardly ever got a chance to run the cars as it turned out it was dads toy.