Inslot's Checkered Flag Raceway - Set Up After the Move (Page 2 of 4)

I finished up scraping all the old glue residue off the braid recesses. I ended up with about another 20 feet of braid to replace. One section of braid on the red lane from the 180 degree curve at the bottom of the banked curve, all the way under the overpass and around to the bottom short straight came up. The glue for that section of braid had totally let loose. Oh well, better to find it now! Tomorrow I will do a little clean up and prep work, and then it's time for paint!

The first coat of paint is down.

From conversing with a professional track builder, I learned the correct terminology for what I was calling the braid lands. The correct term is braid recess or gain. It took me about 3 hours to paint the braid recesses where damage had occurred when the braid was pulled up. I'm hoping the fresh paint will prevent future damage to the braid recess.

I completed the paint touch up this morning.

Next up is VACATION!

....Then back to work......on the track..

I am a nostalgic kind of guy, especially when it comes to slot cars and tracks. I have moved tracks and re-assembled them before. The process usually involves some repair and or restoration work. Usually part way through the process I start to realize there are some real advantages to just building a new track, depending on the requirements for disassembling the track and getting it moved. For the most part this track re-assembly has gone pretty good without too much difficulty. But it's the little things that can bug the crap out of you! Like getting pieces of the used braid back down through these holes in the track surface. New braid is really flat and slides through easily, the used pieces are somewhat wadded up and don't want to pas through the hole easily!

By the end of the day I had completed re-installing the braid at eight tie in points, including the replacement of four sections of braid.

Work will start on the 180 degree at the exit of the banked turn next.

During the reconstruction of Inslot's Checkered Flag Raceway, I noticed this piece of what looks to be steel wire embedded in the track surface about halfway down the lower straight in the white lane. I had an idea of what its purpose might be, but I really wasn't sure. I sent Bob McFarland an email with this photo attached asking him what it was for. Last night Bob called me on the phone and solved the mystery. The steel wire is an indicator for cars with low chassis clearance. The wire sits roughly .035 of an inch above the track surface. When a car with less than .035 inch ground clearance passes over the wire there is an audible metal to metal tick or click sound indicating the car is too low. Cars with too low chassis clearance have always been an issue. I have had tracks that were damaged from cars with inadequate ground clearance, especially on copper tape tracks. Tech inspections are not always completed, especially during test sessions or practice. This seems like a pretty cool idea to me. I'm not sure how it will work for the 1/32 plastic chassis cars, but I'm sure some testing will answer that question.

I also did some testing of the "clearance indicator" embedded in the track surface. My concern was whether or not it would be effective with the 1/32 cars, or whether it would cause problems with their operation. I pushed multiple cars over the "indicator" and felt no interference as the cars passed over. I feel this will be a valuable tool in ensuring proper ground clearance with the cars run on the track. In regards to 1/32 plastic chassis cars, if a car has lead strip installed on the underside of the chassis it may create a clearance problem. All the cars I checked were close to stock height with no weight added to the underside of the chassis. If racers would like to check their car's clearance before running on this track, the indicator is set at a minimum clearance of .035 inch. I believe this is a good spec for ground clearance on the 1/32 plastic chassis type of cars. 1/24 classes generally have a ground clearance spec stated in the rules, .055 to .065 inch comes to mind. My plan is to use .055 inch minimum ground clearance for 1/24 cars or any metal chassis cars. I believe this to be inline with the rules at most of the other local tracks.