Spinoff From the RC thread:

[W4HAY]

Many of us used these as an inexpensive break from grad-school studies back in the mid '60s. DIY rewound armatures and homebrew pulse-width controllers with dynamic braking were commonplace at the track across the street from the campus.

Last Sunday afternoon, Indy car racers Herman James, Roy Hood and George Russell were busy preparing their cars after qualifying 1-2-3. If you don't recognize them as drivers who regularly compete alongside Indianapolis 500 winner Helio Castroneves or racing babe Danica Patrick, don't fret. Messrs. James, Hood and Russell race on a much smaller scale: 1/24th to be exact...

Gentlemen, Slot Your Engines

[W9JEF]

Many of us used these as an inexpensive break from grad-school studies back in the mid '60s. DIY rewound armatures and homebrew pulse-width controllers with dynamic braking were commonplace at the track across the street from the campus.



Gentlemen, Slot Your Engines

Back in the 60's (with the first XYL), we bought a big Maytag combination washer-dryer, and the store gave us a slot-car racing set.

I had been painting, and got some on my pants, so she got rid of the stains with gasoline, and put them in the machine to dry.

(Did I mention it was a gas dryer?)

Blew the door right off of it, but we still had fun with the slot-cars.

[WF7A]

We were very poor growing up, but somehow my mom scraped up enough money so every couple of weekends she'd take us down to the local slot car track and let us wreak havoc with the cars...much to the chagrin of the other racers. It was good, clean fun.

Now if only they would explode and catch on fire like the real racers...

[K7MH]

Herman James is a world class driver. Nice guy too.
For those interested in what is currently going on in slot car racing go to;
http://www.oldweirdherald.com/
It is the QRZ.com of slot car racing. Many pictures in the picture gallery.
Lap speeds are down to less than one and a half seconds on a 155ft King track.
There are several good videos of slot car racing on You Tube as well.
No track around here anymore but I still have a lot of stuff. Here is a pic of some of my cars. I did all the body painting. More trouble than it worth as they get torn up pretty fast at a .007 thickness of Lexan!

[WA4BRL]

I had a ball with slot car racing as a kid in Newport News, Va. This was back around 1965 to summer 1967 when I was in fifth thru seventh grades. A local bowling alley installed a track where they formerly had pool tables. A hobby shop nearby had two big tracks. I started off with a modest car, then moved up to one that was fast beyond my abilities. No matter, it was still lots of fun. The biggest problem was coming up with cash for any more than a few minutes of track time. The hobby was growing like gangbusters for a time and then died quick like hitting a brick wall. Does anyone know anything specific that happened at the time to kill it?

I got a paper route in early '68 with a steady income of 20 bucks a week, but by then, all the tracks were closed down and gone. No idea where the actual tracks went. Wouldn't it be great to find a few forgotten in some warehouse?

[K7MH]

Does anyone know anything specific that happened at the time to kill it?

I worked a a slot car shop back then, Scale Motor Speedway.
I raced Semi-Pro in USRA events. The RC craze caught on and that was the ending of the interest in slot car racing. You can race RC anywhere not just indoors on a track. Pro racing pounded nails in the coffin too. If you got a sponsorship, you didn't buy much from the shops anymore. You had a direct line to the manufacturers and the "team" motors and armatures that were hot tuned and not available to others. So you have less sales by the shops and domination of the races by sponsored racers that puts off the newcomers. There are still a lot of commercial tracks around the US and overseas as well. But the following is not as large. Many racing these days are real die hards though. One problem is that rents for building space is very high these days and that is a lot of square footage to rent to have say 2 tracks that with 8 lanes can only have 16 people actively spending money if things are real busy...typically they are not. Some shops don't charge for track time which I think is dumb. Pro racing is very expensive these days. A good Euro car can run around $400. A good electronic controller is about $200.
Here ya go, open cars on a King track under 2 second laps..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awvPDAKWioc