Reinforcing seamless orange track

Hot Wheels seamless orange track is a far different beast than the 12” segments you find in packs at Target. Keeping seamless track tuned to fair racing condition comes with its own headaches, one of those being waffling.

Waffling is when the track will kind of shrivel up and creates an uneven racing surface, causing cars to jump-n-jump more than you want. This happens due to changes in the room, from temperature to humidity and so on. In short, seamless track is fickle. 

Using Velcro is common, and I’ve tried that…along with magnets and sticky putty. I’ve even considered just screwing down the track but couldn’t bring myself to drill holes into my track. But none of those things gave me results I was happy with.

Then one day while browsing around Home Depot, I found some thin strips of aluminum in the sheet metal aisle. Hmmm…

I took some home and found that they were just about the perfect thickness to fit into the connector channel on the bottom of the track. I slid in the strip along a stretch and was happy to see that it helped smooth out some waffling.

As a bonus, the metal strips seemed to add enough weight to help keep the track sitting on the base board without the need for extra adhesives, which made me happy.

I’ve had the strips installed in my track for quite a while now and they don’t seem to cause any weird side effects…at least nothing that I can see and/or measure.

I wish Home Depot would’ve had some steel strips that were the same width and thickness as orange track connectors, but that seems to be too much to ask. So for now, these aluminum things are keeping things as true as I can get them to be. Maybe they can help your track too.