by Nor Cal Mike » Sun Oct 12, 2014 8:15 am
Sounds like you have your hands full Mas. Hey, 3" lane spacing is a great width for 1/32. It is my standard. I have built all of my tracks on 3" spacing except for my one large Big D oval which is 3 7/8". I built it wider so that I could run open wheel cars and 1/24. The AC2car guys run their cars closer than three, to keep their road width reasonable given the multiple slots in each lane. In fact the AC2car website says that closer is better because cars running close to the other can lean on the other car without the impact from the momentum that a sliding car on a wider spacing allows.
As for digital or AC2car, do you have enough racers near by to fill those drivers stations? I have dabbled in both AC and digital. I built a simple AC2car oval 10 years ago and bought a pair of those Artin Digipro tracks at Wally World when the discounted them after Christmas. I still have them and they still work. However, I came to the conclusion that in my area I never will get more than three guys to show up at my house to play with slot cars at any one time so the complexity of multiple cars per lane is unnecessary whether it is digital or AC. Adding in the complication of building an AC track or chipping all of those cars, I have decided that three lane analogue is best for me.
That said, I do have an idea to put out there regarding AC. First, all of the crossovers required for multiple lanes and their resulting dead spots gives me a headache. They are hard to route, a pain to wire and are well........dead! However, I did come up with a solution to all of those crossing slots, what-so-ever . My system is a four car track using two pairs of AC lines that does not require any crossing of multiple slots. Simple lane changers (LCA's) are all that are needed. In that system, you have three lanes but only the center one is a paired lane containing two slots. The right center slot would be connected to a single slot on the right side. The left center slot would be connected to a single slot on the left side. So two cars would operate on the center left half of the track and two cars would operate on the center right side. By default, all four cars would be diverted to the center lane except for in passing zones where lane changers (LCA's) would allow the car to move to the outer lane of the road to pass. The advantage of this system is that it has NO crossovers. All four cars would be required to operate in traffic when in the center lane and would be allowed to pass in passing zones. Passing would be much like most 1:1 raceways which have limited passing zones where overtaking is possible. The disadvantage of this system is that because each pair of cars is limited to either the center right or center left, you have the same right-left centric racing that analogue racing has. But it is much simpler and requires driving four cars in traffic so it is a good compromise I think.
( SilentWolv, AC2car is a system where slot cars are run on opposite sides of a sine wave of AC current. It allows running two cars in each slot. Google AC2car and you will find a web page with complete info.)