Surfing for my kids xmas presents, I saw a track based on the movie Cars. A review mentioned that it was compatible with “standard” tracks. After looking around, it seems that there are several such standards.
So, what are the standard sizes? Benefits and problems with each? Prices and availability?
Is slot car racing good for a 3 year old (will be 4 in March)? Should I wait? He might still have trouble putting the track together, that is not an issue, I can help with that. Will he be able to race fine?
Is it fun? Is there any degree of skill needed to race?
You’ll set it up Xmas morning, zoom the cars around a little, they’ll fly off on turns, the pets will attack the cars, and in a day or two, the wheels will be gummed up and the contact brushes will be frayed, you’ll step on one of the cars in the dark and that will be it for the Great Slot Car Experiment.
I used to race at the slot racing centers that were all over. OK, it was the late 60’s. The commercial tracks at that time were all hand constructed and mostly ran 1/24 scale cars IIRC. The slot was maybe 1/8" and the cars were 6-7" long. We used to construct many of the cars from parts and build frames from brass tubing soldered together. We’d buy motors, and rewound them too, wheels, bearing etc.
There were HO scale slot car sets that were popular for home use, and I believe 1/32 scale sets too. A brand that was imported from Europe was Scalectrix.
Here’s a link to the Wiki page: slot car And the Scalectrix site itself.
I bought an HO scale set for my nephews, and me, to play with when their ages ranged from 6-10. I think your child is still too young. But you could get a set and “show them how it works”!
Back in the early 70s, the guy who owned the local pool hall (remember those) decided he wanted to set up a slot car track and get into the business. He had a huge raceway, probably about 30 feet long. I used to go there all the time. This was the standard size (1:24, I think). He also had a smaller, HO-sized track.
So, I begin racing slot cars, and I get pretty good at it, for a 10 year-old, anyway. So, given my skill and interest level, my parents splurged and got me a really nice $50 slot car. It was a thing of beauty, as I remember. However, the very first time I raced it, it jumped the first curve and smashed to bits on the floor.
Anyway, I think 1:24 is the standard, 1:32 a lesser-known one, and HO-scale, which is fairly popular for home use.
That almost exactly parallels my family’s experience with slot cars back in what, about 1976? Except it was Dad who stepped on and crushed one of the controllers.
Is HO the best for home use? the most widely available and the cheapest? I have also seen many of the 1:43. Any recommendations? I am really tempted to buy the Cars themed track, but I don’t want to be stuck with a system that I won’t find additions for if he likes it.
What’s the deal with digital slot cars? It says you can run up to 4 cars in one lane (!?). How do they overtake?
I did the “show them how it works” bit with Thomas the Tank Engine. He did not much appreciate it. That was last year’s christmas and it is only now that he is doing his own tracks and getting a real kick of it. Pity that he has way too many tracks and trains to keep on it this year.
As a guy with far too much slot car junk in the garage, I’d say that 1:24 is common at the commercial tracks but that 1:32 (Scalextric, Carrera, SCX and others) is the most standard scale now, particularly for home enthusiasts. HO is generally, you know, for the kids.
1:24 cars at a commercial track can be a lot of fun–they go much, much faster than the 1:32’s. When I was a wee lad I really enjoyed my ‘Temple of Doom’ style race set with various traps and gadgets. Scalextric makes the standard 1:32 home sets, but for little kids I think the lower end ones (Jurassic Park themed or such) you might find at Toys R Us could fit the bill just fine.
The lanes are fully powered at all times and the cars have a digital module that receives throttle information from the paired controller. Then there are special lane-change sections of track. You press the lane change button, then the next time your car passes over that section, the switch moves your car from one lane to the other.
Judging from the posts on the various slot-car boards, the systems (each brand incompatible with the others) are not quite ready for the casual user.
Disclaimer: I dunno spit about digital slot cars. My experience dates to shortly after the cavemen who invented wheels met Edison in a bar, along with some guy from a toy company, and over a few beers, they came up with an idea.
Think of the scale difference this way-you can pack a more challenging road course onto a 4’ x 8’ layout with 1/87 scale than you can with 1/24 or 1/32, simply because of the required space for turn radii. If you choose to really go gonzo with it, building your own little Watkins Glen complete with trains, stationary cars, and buildings can happen with a smaller overall footprint.
If you or your kid really get into the techy aspects of it, you can do a bunch of things to trick out little HO cars. Experiment with different gear ratios, lower resistance pickup brushes, change from the standard tires to silicone slicks and put tiny roller bearings in the front wheels. The flat armature of Aurora cars was easy to hand wind, so by changing the gauge of magnet wire and number of turns, you could alter whether a motor was better for torque or speed.
Well, my brother and I were heavily into slot cars between the ages of 6 and, say, 11 (for me, that was '87 to '92, for him ten years earlier). We were both absolutely car-mad, though, and a big part of it for us was recreating on Sunday evening what we’d been watching on F1 telecasts on Sunday afternoon. If your kid isn’t really into cars, he probably won’t be into these.
I’ve owned a dozen different sets, of perhaps six or seven different brands, from Radio Shack to Scalextric.
Tomy stuff = good, although the cars that come in the sets are generally kinda ratty;
Scalextric = the Rolls-Royce of such things, IMHO. Granted, I grew up in England, where Scalextric more or less has the high-quality slot car market cornered. Also, their range of car styles is pretty British-centric (F1, endurance, Touring Cars, etc.,) although I imagine there’s plenty your kid will recognise. Also, Scalextric’s big thing is that everything goes with everything else. You can buy any number of track setups that more or less recreate famous tracks IRL, or mix and match track bits to build your own. If your spawn really gets into it he’ll definitely want to do that (our garage housed an us-designed mockup of Brands Hatch (elderly English racing track) that probably measured eight feet by ten feet.
EDIT: buy lots of brushes. The cars will take quite a pounding as long as they’re flying off onto carpet instead of concrete, but the brushes will not.
