Home Racing World

My first routed track got taped and tested today. Thanks to Dave R, Old Jaybird, Bibbster, and all of the helpful folks here.





It won't get much scenery, but it should be something to run on until I can build a permanent track.

That will be a good fun drive.

cheers
David

That is awesome! And a big track to boot! Looks like it will have a nice flow to it.

Thanks for the kind words. You can see the edges are rough, etc. Not a real finished product, but since I was fortunate enough to have the tools and a wife who told me I should be able to "play with my cars" I figured I should make it happen. I wanted three lanes, so a pair of 4x8 sheets was almost required. Since it was $5 per sheet I didn't feel badly about it...there isn't much investment other than the time.

Gotta get power and driver stations wired now.

Great looking track.Now that one will be fun to run on!

Rusty

Nice job indeed. Looks like a fun course.

Thanks everyone for the kind words.
I got the particle board at Menards (local big box building supply store). They were in the close-out bin because corners and edges had been damaged. I just routed to avoid those, and one place got filled with Bondo during the smoothing stage. The tape (inexpensive as it was) was more than the wood, so I just did what looked reasonable.
It's made to be "portable" and storable. I can lay it sideways against the garage wall when it's not in use. I would like to get a couple sets of folding table legs to screw underneath so it's up off the floor, but this works for now. It's a small track but the lanes should be a good match for racing. The middle is clearly the fastest (as expected) but each gutter has some sharp corners so hopefully they will even out.

I got it all wired up and running tonight after dinner. My sons (17, 15, 13) were playing a game in the basement and I called them out to see....after several iterations of "we should go back to the game" the laps were still being run. Several moths and mosquitos became road kill. :lol: It's too hot in the garage to be out there long tonight, but it got a reasonable initiation considering I didn't clean it and just gave them Artin Lola prototypes to play with. Tires not sanded or anything, so hopefully the good cars will run better. I will try cleaning it and running some good cars tomorrow ;)

Chappy that is a nice job on your first routing job, it looks like it flows pretty good, and will get faster once it rubbers in. I have run on a couple home tracks in our area and they got faster as we run on it.
Dave K.

Well, it's my first routed home track. But it's not the first track I routed...I helped build a commercial tri-oval (8 lanes, 28 degree banking) several years ago so I sorta had a head start. ;)
Still, it turned out OK for a temporary garage circuit. The corner at the near end is decreasing radius so it's trickier than it looks, and by putting a kink in each gutter lane I think I evened it out pretty well so the lanes will drive pretty evenly.

Now I need timing and scoring so I can have some reliable tuning results. :D

I see a train transformer for power, what kind is it and what is the power rating.
Thanks, Dave K.

Nice work. That will be a great course.

It's powered off a standard battery charger. I have a good power supply in the basement but the charger works fine and lives in the garage anyway. The good supply is for the nice permanent track when my older son moves out to college next year ;)