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Geo Jr. Speedway

78992 Views 500 Replies 43 Participants Last post by  Ade, 
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Hello Everyone,

You may know me from my briefcase track with 1/87 scale cars I was working on some time ago. Well, I'm still working on it and hope to maybe finish it off sometime soon. But in the meantime, I have been looking up at the incredibly high ceiling we have in our garage and thinking about a track that I could lower down. I have done some extensive research on the site, and having a winch system to lower it down looks pretty doable, but before I even start to amass the items to build it, I have a couple questions I'm hoping you kind folks can help me with.

Let me tell you first what I have decided.

I want the track to be digital, and I am thinking routed with embedded Scaley or Carrera lane changers (unless there is some way to put the changer hardware into routed pieces. I did some digging on the forum and this doesn't seem to easy).

I think think I can squeeze out a 6' x 14' track area if I have a connection in the middle. Only 6' x 12' without the connection.

As this thing will be hanging from my ceiling, weight is an issue, so right now I am contemplating using 1/4"MDF laminated with 1/2" pink insulation foam, which I plan to test out soon with some I have sitting around my garage. The track will probably lower down on to some folding tables and will somehow be fastened down to them to keep the track steady.

On to the questions...

I have seen on the forum where someone made a track entirely out of insulation foam (Expanded Polystyrene) as a kind of temporary track, but has anyone tried laminating MDF to pink foam as a light weight alternative? It seems like I would be stuck without elevation with this idea, which I am not excited about. Any good ideas how to have elevations with with this?

I really love the look of the 1/24 scale cars, so I would like to run those in addition to 1/32. Can I do this using standard Scaley lane changers? Is 6' x 14' even big enough to run 1/24 scale cars well or am I just dreaming? Please remember I want to run digital.

So many people seem to go with Scalextric, but is Carrera a good option here? How easy is it to chip cars from other manufacturers with Carrera chips? I definitely like the Scaley controllers better, as controlling the cars with my thumbs seems awkward at best. I will be stuck with cheap controllers at first as I am trying to keep costs at spouse approved levels.

Regarding the winch and mounting it to my ceiling, most of the systems I have seen have been electric winches. Anybody have some ideas for a poor man's manual version? I have some hoists for bikes already in my garage, maybe adapting some of those? The only problem I could see is that it would be difficult to keep the boards level while lowering, especially since I would need two hoists in a row for each side of the track. They also are only good for 50lbs per hoist. Here is a pic...


Many thanks in advance for your help.

Heath
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Alright. Thinking about adding the digital pieces, and getting nervous about chopping them up and ruining the resale value. So my plan is to buy a couple normal straight pieces and cut them in half so that I can keep the lane changers and the apb intact. Can I just cut these with my miter saw?

Heath
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MrFlippant
As long as the blades are sharp and you go really slow, then take the rails out and clean up the burrs from both the metal and plastic, it should be fine. While you're at it, do some metal and plastic work to widen the slot at each end so that cars transitioning from wood to plastic won't slam into the end of the plastic track's rails. A taper on the entry back to wood wouldn't hurt, either.

As for resale value, is that really a consideration? Are you not planning to paint the track, then? Your nice routed track will look kind of silly with black plastic where the lane changers are. Plus, you're lengthening the amount of space needed for the lane changer, by adding bits on at each end.

If you can route the slots to match up with a full piece of plastic in the wood, then you can certainly route them to match up with only part of the plastic track in the wood, plus you gain so much more flexibility with the slot after the flipper, and how much room you need for the run up to the lane changer after the prior turn. I'm not going to claim it's easy. I haven't done either. But I don't see how it would be harder to do it this way than not. Measure twice/thrice, cut/route once.
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QUOTE (MrFlippant @ 13 Jan 2014, 17:56) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>As long as the blades are sharp and you go really slow, then take the rails out and clean up the burrs from both the metal and plastic, it should be fine. While you're at it, do some metal and plastic work to widen the slot at each end so that cars transitioning from wood to plastic won't slam into the end of the plastic track's rails. A taper on the entry back to wood wouldn't hurt, either.

As for resale value, is that really a consideration? Are you not planning to paint the track, then? Your nice routed track will look kind of silly with black plastic where the lane changers are. Plus, you're lengthening the amount of space needed for the lane changer, by adding bits on at each end.

If you can route the slots to match up with a full piece of plastic in the wood, then you can certainly route them to match up with only part of the plastic track in the wood, plus you gain so much more flexibility with the slot after the flipper, and how much room you need for the run up to the lane changer after the prior turn. I'm not going to claim it's easy. I haven't done either. But I don't see how it would be harder to do it this way than not. Measure twice/thrice, cut/route once.


As always Mr Flippant, good advice. Forgot about the whole painting the track thing. I'm still a little wary of routing the back of the LC as it is a lot easier for me to line up a straight line than an angle, but I am going to give it a try on a mock-up and see how it goes.

It's been a while, as I have been combing Ebay, looking for a deal on an APB. There was one for $118 on Amazon, that popped up momentarily, but it was either an error, or was bought instantly. So I finally bit the bullet and bought a digital conversion kit for $199 as I needed the extra controllers, power supply and lane changers anyway.

The APB has been ordered, and soon the track will be in production. The pit lane and the cable for the APB will have to wait a bit until my Paypal account is built back up.

Hopefully soon I will have a good update with some pics of the routing. Now I just need to go back and read Jen's thread on routing a track to make sure I don't mess it up
I always have a hard time matching the routing on the curves where my plexiglass guide ends.

Thanks for reading.

Heath
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Ok. Got the APB, the power supplies, 2 lane changers, and a couple cars now. Connector cable is on it's way. Any ideas on how to test the APB without having the whole track in place? I only have the two straight lane changers for track. I want to test things out before I route it all into place plus, if there is something wrong, I want to to find out in time to return it to the vendor.

Thanks,

Heath
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MrFlippant
It doesn't need to be a complete loop. just put them in a line and run the cars from one end to the other.
Also, there are some problems that are easily fixed, so be sure and post about them before bothering with returns.
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Ran some cars off on to the carpet. As far as I can tell, everything is working correctly. It seems that what I have heard about the APB interface is true. It is not intuitive at all! Can't wait to get the interface cable, and more importantly get the track routed.

Stay tuned.

Heath
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Minardi
Hi Heath,

Sorry If I missed, but what direction are the cars going ? You really need a LC not too far away from pit entry. In your last design, you really need a 3rd XLC, or skip the one parallel to pit lane (which could be a great main straight with Start/Finish if you consider conneting to a RMS) If you only want 2 XLC's.

Can't wait to see how the routing goes !
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MrFlippant
He could probably squeeze an in-to-out CLC at the beginning of the last turn before the pit entrance.
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QUOTE (Minardi @ 11 Feb 2014, 13:53) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Hi Heath,

Sorry If I missed, but what direction are the cars going ? You really need a LC not too far away from pit entry. In your last design, you really need a 3rd XLC, or skip the one parallel to pit lane (which could be a great main straight with Start/Finish if you consider conneting to a RMS) If you only want 2 XLC's.

Can't wait to see how the routing goes !

Hey Manardi,

The track direction is counter clockwise. Trying to save money on the lane changers, so I want to stick with 2 for now. So you're saying I should get rid of the lane changer on the main straight? Then put the extra lane changer where? On the next straight up (next straight working up from the bottom)? I am definitely going to use an RMS.

Thanks for the advice. I can use all the help I can get.


Heath
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QUOTE (MrFlippant @ 11 Feb 2014, 14:30) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>He could probably squeeze an in-to-out CLC at the beginning of the last turn before the pit entrance.

After looking at it a bit more carefully, maybe the solution is to change the direction of the track to clockwise, move the xlc on the main straight, to the second straight up right before the tight curve, and move the xlc on the top straight to the other end of the straight. Then, instead of using the Scaley pit piece, I could use the In to Out clc on the curve immediately before the main straight, but just on the outside lane, the inside lane would be routed.

Do you guys think that would work? I'll put a revised track plan up tonight.

Many thanks for all your help,

Heath
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Does anybody know the radius of the in to out clc? I am working it into the layout, but I need exact dimensions to line it up with the rest of the track. I thought it would be easy to find online, but I have so far had no luck.

Heath
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Minardi
It is the size of a standard R2, that may help.
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QUOTE (Minardi @ 11 Feb 2014, 22:03) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>It is the size of a standard R2, that may help.

That does help Minardi, thanks. I didn't get as much of chance to work on this last night as I would have liked, I'll be putting an updated track plan here later today or tonight.

Thanks again,

Heath
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Minardi
You probably are aware, but just in case, a CLC is a 90° R2 (2 standard 45° R2's), and a half straight with sensor(s).
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QUOTE (Minardi @ 12 Feb 2014, 11:03) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>You probably are aware, but just in case, a CLC is a 90° R2 (2 standard 45° R2's), and a half straight with sensor(s).

I saw the straight piece on the ebay pics, and I assumed the sensor would probably be in there, but it is good to have that confirmation of that. If I cut the straight piece with the sensor in half so it is essentially one lane, will it kill any of the electronics?

Thanks for your help Minardi,

Heath
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MrFlippant
Yes. The electronic board is a full track (2 lanes) width. But, it would be quite easy to embed only the curved portion in your track, and place the sensor board under the wood with the sensor peeking up through a hole in the slot. The board is connected to the CLC piece with a simple jack/plug connector. The only thing you'd need to do is desolder the power wires for the sensor board from the rails under the track, and then provide power to those wires, either tapping off the tape/braid of your track, or with a separate power supply. The sensor board has a rectifier bridge, so polarity doesn't even matter.
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Finally got a chance to rework the track layout. This time I used images of the lane changers to get more accurate proportions...



The clc will have to be chopped to fit on the board, but I'm assuming this will not be a problem. Not sure about the best place for the APB/Start Finish, I just put it dead center of the straight. Is there a better spot?

Thanks for reading and all your help. I finally got rid of the filing cabinet that has been blocking the space in my garage, so routing will commence soon.

Heath
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MrFlippant
If you'd like to fit all your cars with SureChange guides and the appropriate chips with the LED on leads, then that'll be fine.
If not, then some more reworking would be in order. The original one was fine, except for how long in advance a pit entrance would need to be planned. Here is how I think Marcel was suggesting the earlier plan be arranged:


I also think this works better than the latest iteration, if only because the location of a lane changer IN a turn REQUIRES that all your cars are modified with a SureChange guide as previously mentioned. But also, the lane changer locations are spread about more evenly, and in what I believe to be effective locations.

Actually, now that I look at it, the XLC parallel with the pit should be one full straight sooner, or removed. I put the APB in last, and wasn't paying attention to where that lane changer was.
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M
@ Flaq slot racer

Sorry! if it as been suggest before but I didn't read all of your thread...

Why not build a table that you can just flip on it side & put it against the wall?

That way don't have to worry much about weight or spending money on pulleys , cables & crank/motor
Not to mention trying to finding the beams in the ceiling (I am really , really bad at this finding beams in walls or ceiling)

Anyhow I don't remember who or which site it was from but a guy build a big table I think it was something like 20'x7'
He could flip the table on it side all by himself without any effort

Search with Google (image?) for slot cars folding/tilting table or something like that & you should see a couple of them


Mikey

EDIT: Find the name of the member at SCI for the 20'x7' tilting table its cgyracer if you want to look it up?
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QUOTE (MikeySlotCars @ 12 Feb 2014, 17:31) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>@ Flaq slot racer

Sorry! if it as been suggest before but I didn't read all of your thread...

Why not build a table that you can just flip on it side & put it against the wall?

That way don't have to worry much about weight or spending money on pulleys , cables & crank/motor
Not to mention trying to finding the beams in the ceiling (I am really , really bad at this finding beams in walls or ceiling)

Anyhow I don't remember who or which site it was from but a guy build a big table I think it was something like 20'x7'
He could flip the table on it side all by himself without any effort

Search with Google (image?) for slot cars folding/tilting table or something like that & you should see a couple of them


Mikey

EDIT: Find the name of the member at SCI for the 20'x7' tilting table its cgyracer if you want to look it up?

Thanks for the great idea. I'll have to look those up, it might be a possibility. I do have a garage door support hanging down in front of the wall where this is going to go, so the track hinging directly down would not work without narrowing the track down a bit, which I was trying to stay away from.

I'm pretty far down this path and have all the materials I need right not and I'm not really worried about finding the studs and the cords and pulleys as I already have 6 of these bike hoists that I have put up without issue in my garage already.
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