Building HO Slot Car Track

[klavy69]

Since your initial post, I've been looking through the money pits in eBay for some old HO slot cars, but everything I like must be made of gold.

all depends on what you want. Funny thing about slot cars is I thought I was getting cheaper when I went into R/C

So far I think this breaks my internet

It's a shame you didn't put much effort into this, it could have been nice

Amazing Job!

Good thing I wasn't drinking anything cuz it was a verifiable LOL moment...thanx RC10resto

Looks great and glad you haven't lost the urge to keep pluggin away at it. Like the idea of the lexan for sure. Been trying to get the urge to work on my track myself but just haven't had the ambition. DId work on some cars as of late though. Was a sidetrack moment as I was going down into the basement to work on a b3 but made some time up on a car body or two on some lowering but as soon as I messed up one I was up watching tv again

anyway, can't wait for more updates Marc

[Coelacanth]

I've been using these AFX Turbo controllers (red and white with wheels, below) since I had my track decades ago. It seems they're pretty rare. The wheel isn't really a steering wheel, just a circular control for throttle instead of a trigger...and they have a fairly useless turbo button below the wheel. The more you turn the wheel clockwise, the faster your car goes, up to full speed. Press the turbo trigger and you instantly get full speed. You have to be careful handing these to the kids because they promptly jam the turbo trigger and the faster cars rocket off into the HO-scale horizon. When you get used to them, they make pretty smooth controllers though. I've noticed with the faster cars, they get very twitchy, and with the slower MagnaTraction cars like the police cars, you need to turn the wheel to full speed just to keep the car going at medium speed. I honestly have no idea what the Ohms are on these but I suspect it's 60 Ohms or maybe 90 or more, even.

So the research began into what would be an improvement. I found the older yellow AFX controllers could be all kinds of ohmage and the newer ones are cheaply made, glued-together versions. The older ones with 3 screws are better, but again you'll never be sure which ones you're buying because there are bright yellow, gold and pale/cream-yellow versions and due to the age, it's even more difficult to distinguish what you're getting. The newer black Tomy controllers are 90 ohms I believe, and the brand new 120 ohm controllers are also out there, but those are ONLY useable with the fastest modern Super G+ and Mega G+ cars. Try using those with old MagnaTraction cars and you'd be pulling the trigger to full just to get the car moving. Plus, the quality control on those is quite inconsistent and they're glued together as well.

I discovered a type of Micro Scalextric HO-scale controller watching some guy's YouTube video that are 45 ohms and are an easy swap...with the added bonus feature of having a flat-head dial on one side that you can rotate 180 degrees in either direction...in one position, the trigger goes all the way; in the other position, it limits the trigger to halfway. With the AFX Tri-Power pack giving you Beginner, Intermediate and Expert voltage settings in conjunction with these controllers' halfway trigger limitations, you have a fairly good range of adjustments for any kind of car (except the aforementioned Super G+ modern cars, which will only work with 120-ohm controllers) and any skill of racing. I was also happy to see one screw attaches the 2 plastic half-shells together so they can be disassembled and cleaned. The appearance of the components and resistor inside looks significantly better than the vintage AFX ones, and have the wires loop around an internal plastic post on the inside just at the handle to prevent tugs and yanks from ripping out the fragile soldering that I had happen with one of the Turbo wheel controllers. And best yet, you can get these exact controllers all over eBay for $20 or less...a helluva lot cheaper than questionable or not-easily-identifiable vintage controllers and WAY cheaper than the hundreds you'll spend per controller for the enthusiast-grade brands. Win-win!

The ones I bought were $4.99 on eBay for the pair plus shipping and came from some hinky-dink Star Wars Micro Scalextric slot "car" set, but they're the same controllers. I just removed the stickers with a hair dryer, cleaned them up and soldered on some connectors.

I again went overboard with some modding as I still had plenty of UV-reactive wires. I only had 2 orange AFX controller plugs for the terminal track, so I wired some male XT90 connectors to the leads, and female XT90's to both pairs of controllers so they could be easily swapped in/out. I did some test driving and indeed, these Micro Scalextric controllers give much smoother and precise control of the various cars at 45 ohms.

[matt1ptkn]

That last photo looks like an advertisement photo straight out of an 80's era Sears catalog. Love it!

[Coelacanth]

That last photo looks like an advertisement photo straight out of an 80's era Sears catalog. Love it!

Thanks Matt! Back in those days, Tyco "Night Riders" and other glow-in-the-dark sets were made with guardrails and cars made out of that off-white plastic that gave off that ghostly pale greenish glow after being "charged up" with bright light. But really, that glow-in-the-dark effect was nowhere near as amazing as the packaging & advertising made it seem...and didn't last long, either. Neon reactive colors under a black light are a whole other level, you have to see it in person. The pics in the dark over-emphasize the effect somewhat but it's very bright. You wouldn't see race sets sold with this as a feature as they'd need to include a fragile black light tube bulb and fixture along with the set.

[Coelacanth]

I mentioned in a previous post that I painted the lighted cars' clear plastic light buckets silver on the outside, because I think it looks better when the light is actually shining from the headlights ahead of the car, and not spilling out all over and glowing all around the front and underneath the car. I found another use for Sharpie oil-based paint markers: touching up the silver on the wheels. The mags often have the original light silver sprayed-on paint flake or chip off. A metallic silver oil-based Sharpie with a Fine point does a great job of refurbishing those wheels.