Hi Everyone I am interested in City or Northside Club Tracks & Racing

Hi my name is Len, I raced slot cars in the early 60's & from this went on to Electrical Engineering specialising in DC Motors & Drive Systems. The desire to actually drive/ride got the better of me after a few years of slot cars & I went on to 50cc bike racing, Super Karts & interspersed with sail boat racing, however now my mortality has got the better of me & I have more time I would like to return to slot car racing. Ideally I would like to come & get to know people on a few race night & get an understanding of the current cars, rules & regulations before building anything. I have some Scalextric stuff but all pretty standard & in need of some work & replacement parts (Mainly Tyres). Any tips on Brisbane suppliers etc?

Any information would be helpful.

Thanks
Len

Hi Len,
Welcome mate, we are a very friendly and helpful bunch of guys, and i am sure if you turn up and meet the guys you will want to come back and race some more, come to our next racemeet if you can and we can chat in more detail and you will get to meet us. And you will see some great Digital racing with 6 cars at once on 2 lanes and being able to overtake, and come into pitlane for fuel ect. As for Scalextric supplies in Brisbane Red Racer at Clontarf would have the biggest amount of stock in SE QLD. Also i make tyres for all sorts of cars out of Urethane which i might be able to help you out with at a cheap price

Hope we see you soon
John

I managed to set up 3 cars today with some new tyres (From Red Racer Hobbies) & get some of the track working again, whilst the rails were not rusted there was still a lot of oxide on them & the braids did not pick up very well. So I did a light scrub with fine oxide paper & a clean with acrylic cleaner & then metho for the rails. All seems to clean up & work fairly well for some budget priced vintage track.

John I will take you up on your tyre option/offer thanks. It seems that 12 mm rim dia F1 style tyres are hard to come by & also I think the Urethane is a better option than the silicone & hard rubber types. I think it is what we used in the 60's & silicone was banned from the painted wood club track as it made it slippery for other tyres, is this still an issue on the tracks these days?

Looking forward to trying out the digital track once I get set up with a car or two for that.
Regards
Len

Great! Good to see you got the track back in action! Also try some preferably Inox MX3, i just use normal Inox or even WD40 on the braids and even wipe the rails(not the track just the metal rails) it will conduct much better, then if you are having issues and if the layout is permanent you could copper tape it for little cost. Conductivity is more of an issue with Digital slotcars as you are not just sending power through the braids but a signal aswell without inox on a track that has been unused for a couple of days the cars tend to be very spluttery but most of the guys on forums with digital tracks say once you inox the rails that the track perfoms without issue for a couple of months. Yeah i prefer Urethanes there is some good aftermarket rubber aswell but cost is alot more than me making them for us all to use, and the No silicones rule applies still as it does make the track slippery for all the other types of tyres. I have a Scalextric F1 mould that sounds like it should fit, just bring the car or rim with you when you come over.

Cheers John