Home Racing World

Several posts have mentioned hard racing, rubbing, and thrashed cars. My interest is what are the circumstances in which cars are damaged and what occurs.

On my paperclip 4' x 14' oval I managed to damage a few guide flags and guide tongues when cars deslotted going into a turn and rammed the board at the end of the table. When I added a 1 1/2" retaining wall using PVC molding around the curves this ended because cars were now glancing off the wall and not making head-on contact. Cars rarely leave the racing surface since adding the curved outer retaining wall. The few times cars have made the dreaded trip to the floor have been when drifting or fishtailing cars made rear wheel contact and one of them was launched over the retaining wall. The only real problem area is the front straight where a catch fence would be in the way for putting cars on the track.

When home built cars have hit the (wood) floor the most common damage is to motor mounts or rear axles mounts of cars with styrene chassis. My printed paper bodies have survived just fine.

On my new road course several cars took the dive to the floor when I couldn't resist racing on it before having any sort of walls or barriers. Thankfully, the only damage has been having rear axles pop out of their RTR chassis sockets, and one cracked rear axle tab (which holds the bushing in place). Once again, the reason I haven't added a 6"-9" catch fence so cars can't (shouldn't?) leave the table is because it would inhibit reaching for cars on the track.

What are others' experiences with walls, fences, and car damage?

Slothead

On tracks I have built I always have kept the fence to a height of about 25mm.
If you wanna go to the floor....then go to the floor.

I used 2-1/2" PVC window trim around my track with voltage regulators on each lane. As you can see, it is kid tested and kid approved. The only downside is when the racers want to really go fast they crank up the voltage which gets me more exercise in picking up the cars.

Most of our cars run a metal chassis, so most damage is limited to the body. The worst kind of crash in terms of chassis damage is when a driver baubles his turn exit, drifts into another lane on the straight, and the car coming up next doesn't have a chance to react. The car still in its slot piles straight into the rear of the de-slotted car. This is rare, and a worst case scenario. Hitting the floor might seem like the worst, but if you have padded flooring all around the track, the effect of this can be mitigated.

Steve

Back when we still ran with magnets at ~14 volts our cars took a real beating. Since we started running at 10 volts with no magnets it has been very rare for a car to get damaged. After a number of years two of my Scalextric NASCARs have had their guide holders break and those have been replaced with brass parts. When I build a new car I reinforce the guide holder with epoxy glue.

Lower volts usually solves the issue as others have stated.