Slot Car thread. NEW EYE CANDY Page 17

Some great cars, and setups, in this thread.

Had great fun with the kids at Hobby Habit during in Melrose Park (SA) the week. $15 for an hour/person is still pretty good value in this day and age.
Considering 'investing' in cars for the kids as they would look nice on the shelf and it was pretty good clean fun, away from screens.

Is anything that is 1:32 scale essentially compatible with everything else? Anything to be wary of when choosing?
Don't mind a bit of a kit-build as it draws out the enjoyment.

 

Yep, basically every car within 1:32 analogue is compatible with every track.

If you get into digital it complicates things quite a lot. But even then most digital cars work on analogue tracks without issue.

If you're looking for some good cars that can also race I'd be looking into Slot.it stuff, they have a great range, you can buy them for a similar price to everything else, and out of the box you can have a bit of fun, and parts and upgrades are easy to find if you ever want to tinker. (They also make kits if you want to have a go at that)

If you're just looking for cars to race on other people's tracks, that's what I'd be going with.

If you're after your own track there's a few more factors in it, but cars themselves, slot.it are a good starting point as a proper hobby grade if you or the kids want to get fully into it.

Revoslot and pioneer make some GREAT cars, even if range choice is a lot more limited to the others but they're a bit more pricey, and finding parts when you crash them is a bit harder.

I'd only suggest avoiding Scalextric at the moment (unless you can find them cheap on sale) they're now pricing their cars very close to the good ones (slot.it, Carrera, Revo) and the quality in recent years has gone way downhill.

I could rant for hours about how many ways they've fallen compared to the competition, but if you read back a bit you'll see many reasons I'm now actively saying to avoid them.

 

No new cars, and no Bathurst race at home this year, lots of my track, and borders have gone on permanent loan to make a permanent track rurally.





The track is a lot of fun, but everyone hates the first corner right after the powerbase. About 4 more packs of borders and it's finished. I love the dogleg in the back straight, I took that Dunlop bridge out 5 times in my Rally burners.

Those in Melbourne might be interested in the swap meet at the end of the month:


I am not affiliated, and won't be selling, but it's on.

 

New toys.
On the left is a Fly FA72 Porsche 911 GT1 1998 Le Mans 24 hour (2nd place) and on the right is a RevoSlot RS 0231 McLaren F1 GTR 1995 Le Mans 24 hour (3rd place).

They both look great aside from me dropping the fly immediately and breaking the right headlight. And while the Fly looks great and I suspect it'll go OK when it's on the track, the Revoslot is just so good it's almost too good for a home track, it's a serious racing car, so serious they don't even bother fitting the mirrors and antenna and just leaving them in the box:






Revoslot cars have an aluminium Chassis, body mounting mounting plate and wheels, a full compliment of aluminium and brass throughout, actual ball bearings on the rear axle, and are just superb cars. I started paying attention to them when they released the Castrol Toms Supra a while back and it was a beautiful model and I regret not buying one but I'll be buying more Revo's in the future.

Just look at all these screws! What Revoslot lack in range they more than make up for in quality to price ratio. With most plastic chassis cars now pushing $100, this level of quality is not unreasonable for $120.


slightly less impressive than the Revo above is the NSR 0363IL Formula 22 Orange UK #81 Oscar Piastri livery:

It's a good looking car considering it's just a generic mould of a 2022 car with the 2023 livery, but the price was the same as the above REVO, and it's just not as good in terms of quality. If NSR cars were a fraction cheaper, they'd be in a much better position, but I guess if you want "hand finished in Italy" you have to pay for it, and expect some quirks and imperfections.

and lastly for now there's the Scalextric C3327 McLaren MP4-12C Scalextric Club 2012 car, and C3328 McLaren MP4-12C Range Presentation.


I wasn't planning on MORE 12C's, but y'know, they were priced at $60 each which is exactly what they should cost. And for that price they'll make fun bashers when all my Group B cars are dead.
Now to get all them on a track.

 

My kids have pulled out my 40 year old tomy slot car set and are having fun with it, despite it being in very poor condition and barely working, so I'm looking at getting a new set for Christmas.

Looking at Scalextric, the arc air sets look good, the idea of wireless controllers appeals to avoid when my kids forget they're attached and move too far away, dragging the track with them.

It's come a long way since my old set, that's for sure!

I see there are a few different styles of track and base unit these days, is it worth looking for used track to add some length for cheap?

 

fark!!! Those Revo’s look insane. The build quality looks bloody amazing.. before I go and do some research, what are they compatible with?

 

If buying a new Scalextric set for Christmas, ABSOLUTELY open it to check it's all there and actually works before Christmas day.

Their build quality has gone WAY downhill the past few years, and hit a new low this year when a friend bought an arc digital set (at $1200) and they simply didn't put the power base in the box.

It's a new low when something that expensive is flat out missing its most critical component.
No one at the factory bothered to check.
No one at Hornby bothered to check.
No one at the local distributor bothered to check.
No one at the hobby shop bothered to check.

So it was on us as we opened the set, to realise they put a normal bit of regular track in the box instead and then having to deal with the retailer. (And we worked out it was a factory mistake because an extra normal bit of track had the same date stamp as all the rest of the track).

If this was an isolated incident, I wouldn't even bring it up, But Scalextric has been doing this sort of thing a LOT for a few years now, and I would hate for your kids to open a set and have it faulty on Christmas morning.

Just make sure it's actually all there and working before you wrap it, and you'll be ok.

I've had my new revo on Mr. Slot cars tracks, and while it's smooth, and hugs the rails, it's not quite as fast or quiet as the best of the Slot.its.
The Fly Porsche is indeed slow but still looks great, but that Revo F1 is a damn fun car on wood. Even with no magnet fitted, it was within half a second of my freshly rebuilt and tuned slot.it F1.

I'm going to be fitting mine with a slot.it sp15c digital chip (for Scalextric) and I'm pretty sure Slot.it make Carrera digital chips too.

You might get away with a normal Carrera digital chip, there seems to be heaps of room in the car to fit any digital chip even if you may have to drill a hole for the LED.

I don't know how tolerant official Carrera chips are of Higher tuned cars, but Scalextric chips will blow out when you use them with any sort of higher power car, but Slot.it chips work fine with practically anything.

I'm actually eying off a Carrera digital set this Christmas to make use of all my Initial D cars, but space is an issue, and it's a lot of money to reinvest from scratch. a lot of money I don't really have.

 

Thanks, I hear ya, it’s the same for me with actual track real estate.. I got plans to devise something I can drop from the garage ceiling, maybe with some pullies / winch or something. The kids are now old enough as not to wreak the stuff. They are after all, toys, and should be used..

yeah that pink Porsche looks pretty good, Indy was eying that off this afternoon..

I like the 2002’s and the escorts.

 

So is the scalextric app stuff a gimmick or does it add to the fun? (pit stops, fuelling, pace car etc)

 

Honestly, it's kind of a gimmick, but does add a little bit to the fun, but probably the biggest thing it does is lap counting and timing. Just driving round doesn't stay fun for too long, especially when you're starting out and don't have enough track to let your imagination run wild, but when you can set up and have races and know exactly who's going faster, and which car is best it makes the fun a bit more enduring (untill a fight breaks out over who has the fastest car that is)
In the small amount of time I've used the app in analog mode everything gets turned off.

The biggest adding to fun has personally been going digital, it's a lot more expensive, but even having a third driver in 2 lanes made it a whole heap more fun. You could achieve the same result by having a 4 lane track but the space needed to do that is insane.

I'd be keen to see what AFX cars you have, I'm in the middle of restoring a bunch of AFX stuff at the moment, and the speeds and stability of the cars even between the late 80's and early 00's is like night and day.

 

Getting the platinum pro set with a few extra track expansions. That should keep us entertained for a while

It's ideas for the next few birthdays and Christmases sorted too, extra cars and track

 

I have this set, plus a couple of other random ones, and 3 or so other cars.

https://tycocollectors.com/product/1990-tyco-race-and-chase/

I bought it as a kid from the local Kmart, was advertised as an open box, no cars, for $10. Then went to the supplier and bought the cars for $6. RRP was over $120 for the set at the time, so I got a good deal

 

Fark that triple Toyota set looks nice too..

 

My dad has the biggest collection of afx kit sitting in a shed. Spent so much time building with it as a kid. If this is all I get in the will. I will be so happy.

 

Picked up the set last night, tried it out today to make sure it works before wrapping it up for the kids.

The cars were stuttering and stopping all around the track, did a bit of googling and tried out some of the solutions.

Then I tried it with the magic arc app, and it all works flawlessly!

I suspect my old galaxy s9 isn't up to date enough to run the official app properly. Will give it a try using one of the kids new tablets (so much more powerful than my old phone)

 

Weird that it didn't work till you tried the app. Can't say I've ever had that happen. The old app usually worked fine, but the newer one has less small issues. Once you get it up and running on a tablet it's much better because you can actually see a tablet from across the track, and if the kids crash too much you can adjust the throttle curves and brake sensitivity.

Get a can of Inox MX3 and give the rails a light wipe down before each time you use it and you'll have a smoother race. Just try not to get any on the actual plastic of the track or you'll make a skid pan
And if for any reason you do want to flick the arc pro power base into analog mode, don't be alarmed at how different everything drives.

May your (and anyone else reading) Christmas be filled with many crashing and laughter.

 

It was the scalextric app on my phone that was apparently causing the issues. I'll see if there's a difference with the more powerful tablet,

Even a basic oval with no special features was fun, trying to catch the pace car, so I expect many Christmas shenanigans

 

Tried the official scalextrix app with my son's tablet; it worked perfectly, so Christmas is on!