rec.autos.simulators

I wanted to race slot cars in the 60's but I was too young and my parents
didn't have the money for cars controllers, etc. Slot cars made a comeback
in the mid 80's (I was in my early 30's) and I jumped in and made up for my
deprived childhood. I raced Group 12 "flexi-cars"( 1/32 scale cars), Group
15 cars (weekly) and finally Group 27 cars which were fast! I would have
raced Group 7 but there wasn't any local competition. We raced on a "Blue
King" track. At the same time, I got hooked on RC cars and raced 1/10 scale
electric, and 1/8 gas until 1995 when the local track closed . Then I found
Sim racing and I'm hooked again and here I am!

Tim A. Deatherage

"Admitted Sim ***"

I still have my AFX HO set. They are still great fun at parties if you have the
space to set them up. When I was a kid,my step-dad built us a 1:32 set that
folded down from the wall in our playroom. My favorite part was designing and
building the scenery, including a very cool XK 140 that I heated up with a
torch and then "crashed" into a bridge support, complete with smoke and flames.
I think this helped me out later when I was building sets for photographers.

-don

"To race is to live, everything else is just waiting." - Rudi Caracciola

How about a "SLOT CAR SIM" game. Way... COOL.... How about it Pappy!!!!

A slot car racing sim....hmmm....i like that idea.  But i would rather see a
World of Outlaws Sim first.  Talk about raw HP!!!!!!

writes:

I never really got into the 1/24 and 1/32 scale, but I had several HO scale
sets at home(Tyco, A/fx). I even had the TCR at one time.  What a piece of ***
THAT was.  Good idea, poor reality.

Eldred
(who's 35, and considering buying himself a set for xmas...)

Yes!!

    I am 38 and I remember fondly back to my youth when I (of course) owned
a huge Aurora 'ThunderJet' HO race set.  It was fun then because you could
buy sections of track to expand your layout.  It used tose two ittle metal
pins on either side of the sections and a U-shaped connector to hold the two
sections together.  No snap together ***then!  It was cool to have the
section that allowed you to run your HO train set across the HO car track.
You could stage hideous prom night accidents in your very own ba***t.
You could hotrod the Tjet cars with fancy brushes and contacts from the
AutoWorld catalog.  Get sticky silicone slicks glued onto aluminum wheels.

     Then TYCO introduced  the 'Tyco-Pro' cars, which blew away the
ThunderJets and their heavy  polystyrene bodies.  Aurora countered with the
'A/FX' which came only in a brilliant red color and cost 12$.  That was alot
of money in 1975!  All my friends had race sets and we would pool them and
hook up multiple transformers to keep the voltage high.

    When we weren't in our ba***ts racing HO cars, we were at 'Richie's
Hobbies'.  They had color coded BIG tracks for 1/24 scale cars.   I had a
'Mirage'.  Lexan-bodied and painted a sort of McLaren Tangerine color, It
had a brass chassis and a 'Mabuci Can Motor' specially wound for extreme
speed.  The biggest track had about a 75 degree banking on it and only the
best cars could stay on the corner.  I remember the blisters on my hand from
holding my controller (with it's 1/4" phone plug and alligator clips) so
tightly.  Along one wall of Richies Hobbies (which was also a custom car
accesories shop) ran a dragstrip, the whole length of the store.  When two
races really wanted to settle who had a faster car, they set them at the
beginning of the strip and the flick of a switch gave full juice to both
cars simultaneously.  They zipped down the strip into a big pile of blankets
to cushion the crash.

    Recently, in my area (Western Massachusetts), Slot car tracks have
opened up in two of the local malls.  I hope they catch on again, it would
be fun to revisit that era (now that I can afford to buy the coolest
stuff!!)

Thanks for sparking some great memories

daxe

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Scott Hieronymus
Scott696 on Ten

--
Don Burnette
Palmetto Racing
Dburn on Ten
AOLL Iroc Administrator

Yes as a kid we hhd a 1/32 scale slot car layout. Great
family fun on the lounge room floor
Later on in life and in my own home I fitted motors to 1/24
monogram kits.  A Shelby 427 Cobra with a motor fitted under
the hood area with a drive shaft running to the back wheels.
It lives in the s***hobby box now but the 57 Chevy Coupe
with mid mount motor sits on the book shelf in all it's glory.
Track was home built but scaped during a home shift.
--

Redline Race Controls      

Nigel of Lakewood Motorsports
Nascar Coruba & Coke Chevy
Hamilton
New Zealand

Rich Koehler
rgkoehler(at)lucent(dot)com
rgkoehler(at)worldnwt(dot)att(dot)net

All expressed opinions are mine and mine alone!

Yes!  In the age before computers, slot cars were the only way to
experience motor racing vicariously.  When I was a kid in the mid to
late 60's, slot cars ruled!  I used to race at commercial tracks like
Checkered Flag in Torrance, California (which is now a Chuck Norris
Karate studio).  I had a Lola, then a Ford GT, and finally a Chaparral
(the 2E with the wing - not particularly fast, but it looked awfully
cool!).  My brother had a VW Bug.

I also had a home set - first a 1/32nd(?) Revelle set (four lanes!).  I
seem to remember the cars that came with this were Mercedes GullWings.
And later an HO set.

What were the major manufacturers for motors back then?  I remember
Ram.  And Cox controllers.  And Revelle.  If you look on pictures of the
real Chaparrals from that era, you will see a blue Cox decal.

One of my former teammates at Backmarkers-Ferrari (my old GP2 LFRS
team), who was even older than me, still raced in slot car leagues in
Connecticut.

Thanks for the memories,

Dave Ewing

Fond memories....

-Paul

Did anyone ever do motor rewinding???  I always wanted to, but I could
barely scrape enough cash to race the car, let alone spend money for
upgrading it.

-Paul