Hi, I still have the track set up, but its pretty much just a big table now, racing died off a bit mainly due to 'competitors' having to crawl under the track to get in. My shed is 10 feet x 20 feet, the track is big and we still managed 4 cars on track at once, and 4 drivers all squashed up. Pre covid of course. I am on a tidying mission in my shed at the moment, to get my track back as I used it almost every day for months. The cars did 20 mins plus on the track, at a measured average of 3 mph. Doesnt sound a lot but thats a decent lap. A guy on this forum said he had built a lap timer for me, sounded like the perfect track accessory/time trial feature but I never heard anymore about it after he showed me it working on youtube?
Ah well, myself and my friend have found tiny servo boards for tiny(and not so tiny) planes, and they are cheap, and work with a better featured transmitter than their original plane they were made for. We have been having fun with them instead.
Anyway, the cars we used were Wltoys L939. They have proportional throttle and steering, we had to lengthen our wheelbase to fit the mini bodyshell mould that I had made. We had different ways of doing it. I chose to mount my stuff on a ply plate, then another version featured a cut and lenghtened rear swing arm/motor mount. Ply plate was used in my capri as well.
The track is 33cm wide on start straight. 45mm minimum barrier height, I made mine from strips of wood for straights, formica for big corners at beginning and end of start straight, bath panel for flexible bits and hardboard for the rest. It started as a basic oval then grew a couple of extra bits. It can have the flexible barriers moved to go back to being the basic(but still huge fun) oval. Islands are solid wood. Any barrier overlaps are in direction of travel, to avoid catching on them, reverse direction races suffered because of this. The layout has turned out to be very good, you can do a lap around the outside, missing out the centre section or combinations like inside lap then outside lap. We have had lots of close racing. The original bodyshells were moulded from ice cream tub lids, with about a 75% success rate. They were done on a home made vacuum former using a homemade stove with the door open to heat the lid plastic. I based the mini on the mardave ministock, as I had one years ago. The moulds are balsa, carved and sanded. I can print the wheels, or send you the 3d printer file, if I can or give you dimensions to make them on a lathe, I did both nylon and alloy wheels printing them was faster, but not as rewarding as about 6 hours on my home made lathe to make 4 wheels! Rewarding when you are finished😁. They run on standard? Lego tyres, over 1000 actual miles on my original mini tyres and theres another 2 or 3000 miles left on them. have several bodyshells, in various stages, some painted, some with small moulding defects. I can show what I have? I can detail conversion of donor car if you want. I forot to mention the cars are narrowed from standard too, this involves cutting ends off back axle and cutting a section out of the steering and rejoining it. My friend did a 3d printed conversion piece for steering but wont give me the file? Ah well. Theres different ways to do it that have been proved in many miles of racing in a good few cars now counting the other guys ones as well as mine.
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Topic: My best rc car ever. Or how I built my own race cars and track. (Read 2827 times)