Indoor/outdoor routed track

[slothead]

I've never raced on a Carerra track, but I have plenty of Scalextric track gathering dust - nothing is as smooth as a wood track. Plus, having variable radii through the turns is what I'm after, diving into a turn, clipping the apex, then drifting out to the wall down the straight. Hanging the rear end out in a controlled powerslide because the track is its own border.

I would consider Carerra if routing this was too problematic.

Slothead

[slothead]

I bought a 2'x4' hardboard handy panel and left it out on the deck for a few days, one of which was rainy. Since it was a 1/8" sheet, it became a little more pliable when wet, but showed none of the distortion you'd get if it had been MDF. The slick surface seems impervious to moisture, and even though the back and sides got wet, there was no 'bubble up' or obvious damage. So, for the time being I'm thinking hardboard will be the way to go for an ideal 'dirt track' racing surface that could withstand small amounts of moisture in a sudden shower. As suggested by ShotgunDave I'm designing a wheeled table to mount it on for easy movement in and out of the barn.

The big news is I'm now thinking about making it a 2 sided affair, with an oval on one side and a road course on the other. I created my own drawing of DrumPhil's 4'x8' road course so I could share thoughts with him about it, and like it so much I'm thinking about making one of my own to be on the flip side of an oval track. My current thoughts are to make a sandwich out of 2 pieces of 1/8" hardboard and a sheet of 3/4" insulating form. This would seem to mean each track has to be flat without an backing or elevations, but I'm still thinking about options.

Any thoughts about a 2 sided track? I've promoted the idea of a foam core track surface before, but never actually done it.

Slothead

[Nor Cal Mike]

[slothead]

Mike - very nice bracing on the bottom of Little D. My oval also has slots routed all the way through the 1/4" hardboard. But I used a ladder type frame out of 1x3 pine for the bracing and did it in sections like plastic track made of wood. The straight sections are 4' long, and the corners sections are 180 degrees and 4' wide.

Little D looks flat, is that true? The more I think about it the more I'd like to add some banking to the corners by bending the ends and corners upward and shimming with angled blocks of wood or foam.

This might kill the idea of a 2-sided track, but could be worth it. If a 4x8 foot indoor-outdoor oval works out I can try a road course next and create a table top to support either of them.

Slothead

[Nor Cal Mike]

No The little D is not flat. It has a very small amount of banking. Some of the extra bracing was necessary because of the banking. The banking mate the wood on one side of the slot to dip lower than the other side when the wood was bent. I put in some extra 1" x 1" braces to bring the wood back into the proper plane. The little D was built without a router. I drew the line of the slots on the board and then made two passes, one on each side of the line with a saber saw. The result was a 1/8" slot when rings of wood were lined up over the frame.