Thread: Playing with the kid's toys

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Growing up, it seemed that some of my Christmas toys had been opened, maybe Santa had played with them, just to be sure they worked, of course.

Well, I got Dad a pretty cool Lego set for Christmas. Since the processor brick was used (huge $avings) I had to test it out, right?

I'll get it all back in the box, he'll never notice, right?

I'm thinking about getting the kids their first slot car track. Of course it'll need set up and tested out.

Totally agree with both of you; it's being done in the interests of their health and safety, which is the your responsibility as a caring adult.

Right?

Slot car sets rock!

It's even better if they have an area for a permanent lay out.

Ahhh yes! The early Hot Wheels Slingshot Launch high bank oval, and then a year or so later the 50' slot car track that we must have used for at least five years, off & on. Good memories!

I remember the slot cars from when I was a kid they were a ball.

Never one to leave well enough alone, i was soon changing out gears and tires, buying extra bodies etc etc. The most fun though was mounting some of the hard plastic. glue together model car bodies on the slot car chassis.......it was really dynamic when they crashed, parts flying everywhere



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Parts flying everywhere

T bone smash up derby cars! Designed to be smashed, crashed, and reassembled to do it again!

EBay here I come.

Oh, and don't forget the TTP cars and motorcycles
Turbo Tower of Power. Pump them up till they scream and let them go. You needed sixty feet of hallway to really let them run. The motorcycles could do amazing stuff

I really enjoyed the week AFTER Christmas, I had a cousin who worked for Sears & Roebuck... he would snag all the returned slot car sets that were brought in as broken..

I got them all! Way to cool to be able to "fix" the pieces that were supposedly broken and add it to the setup. AH, the good ol' days.

Can't beat your good fortune, Mike, but in the Navy a buddy's wife worked for JC Penney and she got a nice discount. She picked up a 1/32 scale Figure 8 track with a high bank for his Christmas, and it wasn't long before I had one too and we combined them for a bigger layout. It was getting boring until we realized that letting off the throttle on one car gave the other an amp "boost" that could send it flying off a corner. Since we had two of everything, it wasn't long before we had a transformer wired in for each lane, and then an extra bunch of turns on the secondary of each transformer The rear tires wore slick pretty soon after that......

I did a lot of racing at a commercial track when the fad first hit in the mid 1960s. I eventually built a slot car track for my kids with two 4X8 sheets of plywood joined in an "L" shape. I made most of the chassis out of brass tubing, and usually used high-rpm Japanese Mura brand electric motors. The place also had a slot dragstrip. A lot of us built special boxes with a rack of batteries in them to apply a reverse current for braking when we let off the throttle. When the kids tired of the slot cars, I stored it, then eventually turned it into a model train layout.

I remember my first introduction to slot cars, there was a commercial track that opened not far from my house. It seems that in those days, the Globe was the motor of choice. We used to gain traction by coating the tires with STP, which would spin a web out behind the car as it went down track. The owner of the track wasn't too impressed though.

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My first commercial 1/24 scale car was powered by a pitman motor, they were a large open style motor (looked like something you'd find in an erector set), they were the hottest set up in their day. Then the open style inline motors came along (tyco I believe), followed by the enclosed inline style (mabuci). The mabuci style motors were smaller, lighter and faster, made the other types extinct.
Wasn't long after the mabuci type motors became popular that I learned to advance the comutator and shim the magnets to go even faster. Soon after I was rewinding them for even more speed. Next thing I knew I was building commercial tracks, selling modified motors and scratch built frames.
Years later, my son grew older and wanted to try them out. Closest track was a few hours drive away, so I built a track on the rear patio, then built a room over the track. All the neighbor hood kids had a lot of fun (including me)!!!

Originally Posted by techinspector1

We used to gain traction by coating the tires with STP, which would spin a web out behind the car as it went down track. The owner of the track wasn't too impressed though. .

We used oil of cloves for the same purpose. I'm not sure why it worked, but it did. Smelled nice, too.

Originally Posted by Henry Rifle

We used oil of cloves for the same purpose. I'm not sure why it worked, but it did. Smelled nice, too.

The oil of cloves was traction tonic, STP was tire glue....

Two funny things I saw here as you guys were responding. The letting off and watching your opponent flying off a curve was an awesome dirty trick. Our basement was an old coal room back in the day. It had ledges built into the walls. Our Dad used a ping pong table as the first slot car track base. Then it got extended to the coal ledge all around the room and came back down by the chimney. It was pretty sweet. The 2nd is after the slot cars, we got into HO scale trains. My Dad gave me all the train stuff. Once our kids get older, I'll set it up in our basement. Good fun and memories in that basement due to those cool toys. Haha