The Sloshed Slotcar Racing Co

Here are some tracks that we have raced over the past 6 years. The older ones are in my dining room and the more recent in the Little Ship Club. The track was bought over 10-15 years mainly over the last 5 years on eBay. I have bought sets and sold off the cars and standard curves (9" radius) and loop tracks. I now have over 1000 feet!

The track above was at home on 12^th November 2004, the crossovers were used to try and make the lane lengths similar and to ensure that each lane had the inside lane on the tightest bends. Note the cardboard supports under the straight to the left between two banked curves, these and a corner banking support were built in an attempt to make the banking supports less fiddly than the standard Tomy items. They work well and are lightweight, the only trouble is that they take up a lot of storage space as they do not fold flat! Note also the lap counters, made from two standard two lane Tomy items with a leg cut off each, and the remaining legs glued to a piece of plywood. They were better than nothing but electronic lap counting is the way ahead!

Another thing to note is the tire mark on the baseboard, that was from when I stripped the old Guzzi down in the dining room, so that was before 2004!

The track above was built in December 2004 using Aurora flexi-track as a section of hill climb, it also had crossovers, ans Aurora double crossovers and sideswipes. It wasn't a great success and the track was changed to the photo below for the race day. The spiral down at the top of the hill climb worked well and was used in a later track. I started to realize though that getting all these hazards on eBay did not mean that I had to use them all in the same track!

The track above was as it was raced on 30^th December 2004. The hazards made the track tricky to drive but took a lot of learning so there was a lot of work for the Marshals. The chair on the left of the photo is a marshaling seat accessible only by crawling under the table. As drink-driving is a large part of our meetings, sometimes a marshal can get stuck in the corner post for a while! Some drivers wanted faster more competitive racing so the tracks after this one started to have less hazards

 

 

The track above was raced in Nov 2005 great speed with all the banking but the crossovers caused a few problems. The corner crossovers are old Aurora Q lock items with Tomy to Aurora adapters fitted, these are actually quite tight bends, the main problem though was all the arguments when drivers took each other off, who did get there first?

The bridge is made from corrugated cardboard, yes I ought to get out more! The 4 lane track supports are older Aurora items bought from the USA on eBay.

You may notice that there are power boosters at about mid race length, these are standard Tomy start straights with standard plugs from spare hand controllers and transformers cut and wired together to give the power to the furthest point away from the transformers. This arrangement works well as there is quite a bit of resistance in all the track connectors between each piece of track. This track was 55’6” long (nearly 17m) and the first time the power boosters were used. Also the first time out for the  Tomy electronic lap timers.

 

 

The track above was raced in March 2006, 57’4” long (nearly 17.5m) much faster and with no hazards. This is the track that was videoed by Steve (yes he ought to get out more too!) Plenty to think about though with 6” rad bends and the chicane to trip up the unwary. The lap timers are great, not only an improvement in terms of ease of use to the Tomy overhead lap counters that were cut about to use for 4 lanes, but with timing to 1/100th of a second and fastest lap times too, we started adding extra points for the fastest lap to try and stop drivers touring around the track to save from coming off, and nobody likes slow racers! It was the first time out for a wizard Storm, amazing car. I now have six of them and will build a six-lane track in June 2006 to see what they can do!

June 2006 six lanes and loads of fun! (Except for the marshals!) 35’11” (nearly 11m) long with equal lanes. Three lap timers and a new six-lane bridge. However no power boosters yet, I need to convert some more start straights to connect the center two lanes but at only 36 feet the power drop was not too bad. The blue lane ran a bit slow unfortunately I think it was a duff transformer, but was unable to sort it out on the night, at least everyone had to race on blue so it was fair.

 

Three lap timers linked with mini jack leads from audio equipment. These were expensive in the 80’s when they came out, and sell on eBay for over £60 but are well worth the cash. The six-lane bridge and track supports are made from corrugated cardboard and PVA glue again, this time with advertising (yes I defiantly must get out more or get a job on Blue Peter!) The bridge base has corrugations running at right angles to the track and the sides with the corrugations vertical, making a very strong structure.

 

Power to each lane from a separate transformer saves the “power surge” when one car comes off and keeps things fair.

Power to the middle two lanes is from two pairs of start straights cut and wired together to allow for standard Tomy plugs on transformers and hand throttles.

 

 

The wizard Storm cars are amazing, but take a bit of getting used to, not quite flat out all round but almost!

These cars were doing lap time two thirds of the

Tomy Super G+

All tracks are designed on AutoCAD I have built up a library of track parts for 2, 4 and 6 lanes and can insert them a blocks into the track plan drawing. Many years ago I uses to draw them all by hand, but it took an age! If anyone remembers the Grand Prix circuits at my old house in King Street 70 feet plus 4 lane tracks, great fun! I don’t have the room now, but have bought a 6x3m marquee for the garden (yes eBay again), so maybe next year we can race on something a bit longer. King Street tracks were all on the floor, which is not as easy as up on tables as it is now.

Whilst down memory lane, it was summer 1995 when we had the track in the clubroom at the Queen’s Head, and the year before when we raced the Monaco circuit at the same venue. Now the clubroom is no more maybe another venue can be found? The main problem is that the track has to go up and come down in the same day, whereas at home it can stay up for a few days, making the logistics a bit easier.

 

Maybe the next thing to do is to link the lap timers to the laptop, it would save on chalk! Those with sharp eyes will notice that I won (well it is my toy after all!)

 

The track above was raced on Friday 13^th October 2006, loads of banking for flat out speed and some twisties, it was very, very fast! A very good turnout with 22 drivers! A record. Many thanks to Deane from the EAHORC who turned up with a box full of cars. You can see the EAHORC website via this link

 

http://www.bglawns.com/eahorc.htm

 

They race in a less disorganized fashion than we do!

Unfortunately the track above was taken down before I could take any photos. The high level section worked very well and did not obscure the track below or behind much, but it did have a very long fast section!


Well we raced the track above (and below) and it was a blinder! I am amazed that the resin bodied AC Cobras are still going, most of the windscreens are missing but none of the bodies are split.

9^th February 2007, the loops and the section up the wall caught the unwary out, and added to the running length of the track in the limited space we have here. Building works at home have interfered with the racing program, something to do with taking up all the floors on the ground floor of the house. So we moved the race venue to the top deck of the Maldon Little Ship Club.

Looking West

Looking East

The track above was our first race at the Little Ship Club on 22^nd July 2007, 145 feet six-lane track! There was a loop at the West end to try and keep the lane lengths similar. The cars went from West to East, then back E to W, back again W to E and finally E to W. The marshals had to concentrate to put the cars back on the correct straight, this resulted in some unusual lap times, but the stewards (that's me) always discount any strange results! Our first race at the Maldon Little Ship Club was a huge success, 21 drivers and a few MLSC members watching. My thanks to the MLSC for having us and keeping the bar open for all our needs! Unfortunately there was an electrical problem with lanes 3 and 4 so we only raced four of the six lanes.


The two photos above were from the second race at the MLSC, on 23^rd February 2008. Again a very successful evening. The track takes about an hour to lay but then 2-3 hours to get power connected, and the power rails cleaned to get the cars to complete a full lap without stopping. When it gets going though it just gets faster and faster! This track did not have the chicanes as the last one did as they were a pain for the marshals to recover cars from in front of the drivers, and no one wanted to stop concentrating on their car to put someone else back on. So the straights were clear of hazards in front of the drivers and at over 25 feet long straights were awesome!
There was still a problem with the power boosters, I thought I had resolved the problem, it would take a another year for me to get the boosters down from the loft and check them all out, while I did that I added some extra length to the cables too.


Looking West

Looking South

Looking East

Above 25^th October 2008 I still hadn't sorted out the 6 lane power boosters and 6 lane was considered by general consensus to be too difficult to marshal, but it was a good track all the same even though it was a lot shorter than previous tracks at the MLSC. With only 4 drivers there should have been more marshals and also less races (we race once each in each lane). The other bonus with this track was that the drivers could all see all of the track without bits being obscured by other drivers leaning forward. Also 4 lanes meant that we could have banked corners too, the main straight with banking joining other straights gave an amazing flat out section with a tricky infield section as a balance.

The photos below are of our last race on 10^th July 2010 a six lane Silverstone circuit with the new infield section that we raced the night before the British Grand Prix. The track was great with a nice combination of fast straights and slow tricky corners


Looking South, Club and Vale corners right and Abbey to the left foreground

Looking South at the Luffield Brooklands complex

Looking South at the new section, Village, the Loop and Aintree corners with Maggots and Becketts in the background

Above, the start with three linked lap timers, I have a couple more of these so we could have more lanes!