Climate control ?

[rick42]

How will temperature variations affect the slot cars and track. I have a newly routed track . I used braid and double sided tape from SCC. I am in the process of getting the room air conditioned. Should be done by the weekend. Do I need to run the air conditioning all the time or not. How will it affect the cars ? Temps are running from 70 degrees at night to 100 degrees during the day.

[Nor Cal Mike]

I have a 10 year old track using braid and 3M double sided tape from SCC. It is located in the attic of my shop. It has never lived in a conditioned environment other than when I run a swamp cooler in the summer when I am playing with it or with a small space heater under my drivers stations while playing in the winter. I haven't had any issues. I live in NW California so we don't get extreme cold and heat in the summer is dry. However we do get 75 inches of rain here in the winter and temperatures down into the mid teens sometimes. Double sided tape and braid is tuff stuff. It is tougher than mdf it is stuck too. Here's a story. I recently dismantled my traveling Big D oval that was built on a trailer. It spent 10 years of winters under a tarp. However the track was made of mdo plywood rather than mdf and is much more moisture resistant. The braid never lifted in all of those years. I saved that braid which came off of the Big D. I plan to clean it up and reuse it some day. I have reused braid before. Some of the braid on my attic track is recycled.

[frank9129]

Rick,
I own Crab Alley Speedway. I have been using it since about 2008. The track is routed and has copper tape.
The track got to live in the house for the first 9 months. After that it has been on my car port. The temp. ranges from -5 to 100+. I have not had any trouble with it.
I did have to do a repair when the track was hit at a stop light. It got retapped three years ago when I kid spilled a coke. I have never moved that fast in my life. A sanding, coat of laytex paint, new tape and back to the kids.
Good luck with you track.
I am in the process of building a GYPSY tri-oval. If I can finish all the honey-do jobs.

[waaytoomuchintothis]

Rick, humidity is much more important than temperature, except when the temp gets high with high humidity, like it does in the part of Texas where I lived. I was in Waco, and it wasn't unusual for us to have 70% humidity and 109 degrees for weeks at a time- very dangerous to work outside. I've told people for years that even buffalo herds had enough common sense to get out of Central Texas in the summertime. Up in the neighborhood of the Caprock where you are, I imagine the temps being lower, you may not have that lingering humidity. But watch out for it. The cooler it is in your place where the slot car track is, the more humidity can gather. Best practice is to seal the crap out of the MDF. Backside, in the slot itself, ends of the sections- everywhere, including of course the track surface itself. By the way, just a little over 100 degrees, the adhesive on the copper tape or double sided tape under braid, will get soft. Don't disturb it until it cools off.

[Pappy]

My track is made out of MDF and I have copper braid glued down with 3M transfer tape. The temperature in my shop never gets above about 85 degrees or below 45 degrees. It does get humid in there but I've never had a problem with the track/braid. But I have seen where a temperature change of as little as 3 degrees affects the traction of the cars. As the temperature went up so did the lap times.

[slothead]

My oval and road course are in my barn loft here in central Maine. The loft is insulated and heated, but it's still too expensive to heat it all winter long, so February - April when the heat is off it gets below zero up here and I have never had any problems with either routed track - the hardboard oval or the MDF road course, both with copper tape. The oval is 13 years old and the road course is 6 years old. I even leave all my cars up here all year and they survive just fine.

As for temperature effects on cars, on a few occasions when I had to come up here to get something in the dead of winter I've fired up the track and run a few laps till my hands got so cold my fingers went numb. The cars work okay at temperatures below freezing (lowest I remember was -4 degrees) but the tires lack grip. Otherwise the area is heated to 70 degrees and can get up to the high 80's in mid-summer. Temperature does seem to have an effect on lap times but I've never kept track well enough to document it.

Slothead