Home Racing World

Well I am still pretty new around the forum, but I have been getting around the area meeting the people that I can. I have posted some, but not as much as I would like. I have been racing HO for along time and have a nice 4 lane HO track and a good group of folks that come over on a regular basis to race. While looking for more folks that would be interested in running with us I ran into Locoracer Tom. He was into the larger cars and hadn't run HO in several years, but got a car and joined in with the fun, but would always talk about the larger cars and what fun they are. That prompted a trip over the HRW world headquarters to check out the larger cars and get to know some racers in the area.

I was planning on selling the 4 lane Tyco to make a HO routed track and after I saw what was possible with the larger scale cars over at Harry's place I decided to hold off. I have had a stack of lumber in the garage waiting on me to make up my mind that I had bought the week before my trip to HRW and now it is time. My mind has been made up. The HO track will be put up for sale as soon as the race series that we are running now comes to an end. Construction of the new track is set to start on the weekend of 4/3. It sounds like I have some well qualified volunteers, but if you live in the area I welcome you to join in.

This is the HO track. 4 lanes 66' 5" on centerline. All vintage Tyco track. You will find this listed for sale in that section in about a month.




I have been working long and hard on the new track plan and this is what I have come up with.



4 lanes 72' center line. 4" lane spacing withy 6" gutters inside and out. Please share thoughts, ideas, and concerns, but do it quick as we start building in a week. I will try to post updates on the progress as we go.

Looks like a very fun design to me! The overpass will equal those lanes nicely, and the competition will be great.

Bob

Yeah, this looks great. Not sure what caused all this...but I'll race on it :)

Ya, not sure what caused all this.... I wonder. I'll start with blaming Tom. My trip to the Skunk Works didn't help either, but I will put most of the blame on me. I like hanging out with great people and having a great time. Damn my faults. Oh and it's fun too.

Thanks for the how to on posting pictures. I finally got my crap together and did it.

Ok now that you guys got me hooked how many of you can spare some time next weekend for the start of the build?

Got started last night on laying out the leg parts. Got 57 of the 80 triangles laid out. Heading to Menards to get the rest of the lumber today. Then it's back to the legs. I think I can have them all cut by Friday morning. Stay tuned.

The track has a name. I had another name in mind, but as I have been working on the plan and gathering material I have been getting the same look from the people I talk to. You know the one. What are you insane? So it would seem that it is destiny that it be called the

Got most of the rest of the materials needed yesterday. I didn't like the hardboard for the track walls so I didn't get it. They had other options that I considered, but I didn't care for most of them. I do some work with a plastics company and want to see what they have that would work. UHMW 1/4" thick looks like a good choice and it comes in colors. No painting required, but I don't know what it will cost.

Today I got the router bit made for cutting the gains and started cutting out the triangles for the legs. I'm not sure how many I managed to get cut before the table saw took a crap. Wouldn't you know that after years of owning the saw and never having the slightest problem with it tonight the edge of the belt sheave broke off. Now just how the heck dose that happen? 13 years of never having a problem and now it this. Tomorrow I'll find parts and get it going for the weekend build. How crazy. Good thing I started early so I could get the crazy stuff out of the way up front.

Well you are a busy man. Take good pics and keep Tom busy too :)

Oh you know I'll keep him working hard. He can be the photographer too. May even try to do a video or 2 like we know what we are doing. We can do things a few times and work the kinks out. Then get a video of us doing it like real pros. Well we will try to get it on video any way. I'm sure we will end up with a few tool time bloopers along the way.

The legs cut and waiting to be finished.

Cutting the outside of the 96" turn for the cross over turn.

Who said you had to take this stuff serious. Kind of have the mad man thing going on after the first cut.

Finishing the last turn.

Tools of the trade.... Or I thinks so. This is my take on the trammel for the router. It was a 48" drywall square and I took the end off to add a place for the router.



This is what we had by the end of day one. All the legs cut and waiting for slots and holes. All the track surface cut and laid put on the floor for alignment.

Progress of day one.

Well look AT THAT!

Nice work so far, very well done!

Cutting the last corner with the router and a nice solid straight edge. Half depth on the first pass.

Finishing the cut.

Not on the legs, but all clamped together and working out the elevation changes on the floor.
http://i1066.photobucket.com/albums/u41 ... wau7uo.jpg




Next is working out the legs and getting it up off the floor and out of the corner to rout the slots and gains.

Looking good. Are you working Tom hard as well?

That is going to be one FUN Track! Nice work right there.
I like seeing someone just flat get after it when it comes to building anything, see it, plan it, do it!
way to go Karl




Bob

Working Tom hard? I don't think he could remember the last time he put in a 8 hour day working that hard. I think he is ready for a day off, but he keeps up like on old pro. It has been invaluable to have his help. He has a very technical mind too and we can feed off the creativity and knowledge of one another. I owe Tom a super big thanks.

While working together we have done our fare share of bench racing as racing guys do when they get together to do anything. With a speedway that has a name like Insane Speedway it opens up all kinds of interesting opportunity's for race names. We came up with an interesting idea for the first official event on the track. More details soon.
As for the build even Tom kept saying that I was being a little to ambitious for my first build. While I agree that this track would not be a good idea for most first time builders I was confident that with Toms help I could pull it off. If you look at the track plan you will notice that on a track with 5 turns only one turn is 180 degrees. All the other turns have an odd degree. While it was very time consuming to make sure we were getting all the corners just right it sure is rewarding to see it setting there all cut out.

I was going for something that had a lot of flavor and would be interesting to race on. 5 turns that are all different radius turns while still being constant radius corners. Then a nice mix of straightaways to couple them together. With 14' for the longest and no 2 the same length. I hope that the track will be challenging for all that come to race on it.