Hello! New guy here with some questions
Hi there all! I wanted to introduce myself and ask a few questions.
I found this community a couple days ago and did a deep dive down the forum and youtube rabbit holes. This is awesome! From what I have read, most of you found this hobby in similar ways. IE coming across a bigger youtube channel and search engine traveling your way here. I thought a nice way to introduce myself was to tell you my roundabout way of finding you lot.My two-year-old and I have been slowly building up "his" hot wheels collection but have had no track until recently. I happened upon 4 sets of crash racers at a garage sale for cheap and I asked the guy about why he had so many. He told me that he bought them to try and start a racing youtube channel like 3DBotMaker. I nodded in pretended to understand and then came home to search for this thing called diecast racing. Holy moly I am hooked, sort of. I most certainly do not have the space or time to build a permanent tack like most of you have here but I did find the post by EcuWeeEcosse www.redlinederby.com/topic/modular-track-support-structure/3937?p=1 and I have some basic enough skills to try and recreate something similar so I am excited, to say the least. I will stop rambling and start asking my questions already!
- I have noticed that the crash racers track does not make nice angles such as 90 or 180, more like 95 and 190. This seems to make the turns a bit harder to line up nicely. Has anyone else found this and found a solution to it?
- I understand that it will likely be up to personal preferences, but has anyone figured out an optimal slope for straights? There seems to be a happy area in which the cars will make it down the track but not so steep that it's over too quick or it has to be built very tall.
- Last, how do you all stick down your tracks so they don't wander around the play area?
Thanks to all and happy racing!
Discussion
Welcome to the hobby banjosomers! You will find a ton of great resources on this website, as well as many helpful diecast racing enthusiasts that are more than willing to share knowledge of building an open track with crash racer sets. I have only built a test drag track, but check out the Track Build Journals archives for ideas and tips for open tracks!
Welcome to redline derby hope these answers are helpful.
Here are materials for sticking down your track : glue, ducktape, screws, heavy duty double sided tape and many more. With slopes it depends how fast you want your cars to go .10 degrees works best for me.
Hope this helps.
cheers, AJ
If I were you I'd start running in mail in races ,before trying to host your own races,that way you can ask questions,and get a good Idea of how you want to build,and how it's done,start with rip and run cars ,(stock hot wheels or matchbox cars),before you start modifying.then ask questions.everyone here is more than willing to give you advise on how to start this hobby.Just hang in there,it gets really fun the more you learn,and welcome to the club
Welcome to the money pit lol It can get very expensive and time consuming depending on how deep you want to go. Slanman customs makes some great products for the C/R set. I use the 2 lane 180 for the first turn then C/R after that. It takes a lot of tinkering to get the speed right so that the cars can finish. The track connectors that Slan also sells can be screwed down to hold the tracks in place, if not you can always just use 2-sided heavy duty mounting tape. Starting slope for my track is around 12* which gets the cars going down pretty fast, for perspective the Super 6 lane raceway is between 12 and 14* depending on which part of the track.... My Super 6 is 13.2 at the top, 14.3 mid and 12.3 at the bottom, thats most likely because of the parts that koin together but it's roughly 13* slope average..
About 1 inch per foot is considered optimal by many. Welcome to the rabbit hole!!
I suggest Slanman Customs to fill some of your needs with the track. There are some others that deal with similar items.
Good luck.....