I remember ditching school and going to the local slotcar place to watch the "old"guys race,when I was about 8 or 9. There was at least 5 tracks in there,including a drag strip! I got to be a corner worker and put the cars back on their colors. Can't find them anymore. There was one in Downey for a while,with a digital drag strip,computerized to calculate times and MPH. it's gone now too. Anybody else remember those days,before the clear plastic "wings" to keep the cars on the track? Hard plastic bodys,Cox,Aurora.
I had an aurora HO scale track at home and I "knew" that track but the ones in the store fronts I could never get the hang of. Or maybe I couldn't afford to put in the $hours$ to "learn" them? Anyway, in the summer we usta peddle across town to the tracks in the store front across from Shady Acres Miniature golf on Long Beach Blvd in North Town and watch the "old guys" race too. And they were old guys, retired adults or a few younger adults in wheel chairs or some other reason they weren't "at work" in the daytime. The drag cars were awesome fast! I don't know if it's still there, but about 5 years ago there was a huge track complex in a store basement across the street just south of the park in Monrovia. ETA Some of those guys would sit and hand wrap motor armatures with special numbers of winds and run the drag strip and frown... and hand wrap another one, strip and reassemble the car, which was a hand made chassis that WAS the motor end plates and run again. I have some old R&C's from the 60's tha have some sot cars action in them, wow. thanks for the reminder.
my dad used to take me to a place on sherman way in canoga park when i was a kid..but its been a long time since i have seen one...i think for the most part there gone.. just like all good things..
We used to ride our bikes into town to the local track and race, I remember everything was elevated and they had pancake turners on long wood handles to retrieve the cars when they jumped the track
Theres one on Lincoln in between Valley View and Holder by Cypress College. Last time I looked it was still there....it sits in an old building next to a fast food chain (Wienerschnitzel???) I'll check tomorrow.
we still have on in Vallejo....I went once and couldn't keep the damn car on the road...heavy hands I guess!
Dude,,there's a slot car track in Buena Park,,,OC!. Two road course tracks & a Dragstrip thats un freaking believably quick. I think its www.buenaparkraceway.com or www.buenaparkspeedway.com We should hook up there with our old slot cars.Im getting them out tomorrow for an asessment of parts & cars/support stuff. Im a Group 15 freak.
I still have my slot cars and "tool box"... But they took out the track. It was SOO big you couldn't walk around.....just stand there and play.
yep, still got my stuff. used to race womps when was in junior high....raced 2 - 3 nights a week. always diassembled the car, and engine after every race
When I was the same age, 8 or 9, we had a sports complex in town. They had swimming, bowling, pinball, and then downstairs... 4 or 5 huge slot car tracks. They weren't HO scale... much bigger, like 1/24th scale or something like that. The cool cars were completely hand built and they sold all of the parts and supplies for building your own. You could buy the HO cars there but they had no track. My best buddy and I would race on my HO track for hours on end... first one to lap the other like five times would be the winner. This way if you jumped the track, you could set it back on and catch up again. Go figure, my favorite cars were the old ford coupes. Thanks for the fond memories! No video games in those days but we sure had fun.
We had one on Van Buren in Riverside. Had a Davey Allison #28 Havoline body. Being a "stock car" class, I had to run a womp-womp motor. They had a big road course, and a fold-down dragstrip. That womper would kick ass on the strip til about 3/4 track then get its ass kicked. Very cool time.
I returned to the US in 1960 after a year away, and slot cars had happened! There were at least a dozen commercial tracks around LA, but my absolute favorite was Grand Prix Hobbies in Van Nuys (I think), run by Bob Coogan. The track was a bit like Riverside, with a back straight the full length of the store, plus hairpins, esses, decreasing radius bends, and an elevation change of maybe 3 feet from the Eastern extremity to the West. At first, cars were 1/32 Strombeckers with clay and BBs for ballast, plus sticky aftermarket tires. Later ran handmade brass chassis with fiberglass or VUF bodies, Bonner motors and another brand I can't remember. I was 21, and my buddy and I would go racing one night every week. HUUUGE fun. I remember discovering that if I drank one beer before racing, it would fuck up my lap times. Thanks for triggering all that recollection!
haha, A mate just bought a huge slot car track. He built a second garage just to house the fuckin thing, its huge. All routed timber track. Its good Friday night fun, in a nerdy kinda way
There's one in Kansas City still on 24 Highway. I haven't been -- I was into the RC stuff instead when I was an "adult" . . . had one of the first gas offroad truck conversions off the old RC10T trucks. Ah memories . . . different of course.
whatta blast from the past...i remember my father taking me to one in framingham, MA...modelville raceway...must've been 65/66...it was right down the street from the chevy plant. at first i was just one of the kids hanging around the track replacing "wrecks"...then my dad bought me my own car...a 1/24 lotus...spent many a saturday afternoon blasting around the track.
I started with a hard plastic Cox car that must have weighed a ton. Every store had it's own top dog. The guy noone beat on his home track. I wound my own armatures and balanced them on razor blades. I scratch build a brass sheet stock "semi-sidewinder" frame. I finished it the night before leaving for Viet Nam. I took it down to the store in Oxnard Ca. and thrashed everything in the champs box. My box and all it's contents was stolen out of my car while I was away. When I got back the track was long gone.
Still have all my HO stuff. Ini Houston, my son and I go here. Very cool and fun. http://www.houstonscaleautoracing.com/
I lived in Napa, Ca when I was in elementry school. There was a track & I had a car, open sports car of some type, might have been a Lotus. Still have it somewhere. Saw an article in the newspaper that seemed to indicate someone was opening a new track. Turned out to be go carts!
We go racing at slots of fun in Fremount nebr all the time. There is allso going to be a track in Omaha very sone. Then there is the one I built for my garage if I ever get of my @$$ and paint and braid it. Got to unbairy first
Never been, but there is one at about 2nd and main street's in Joplin Mo. I think they are open on Sat's if someone want's to pay them a visit during the HAMB drags weekend. Dan
I would love to get a HAMB slot race going at Fremount or the Omahs track if there was enough interest.
I grew up in North Hollywood/Studio City in the '60s and there were a bunch of tracks around. First car was a Revell 63 Corvette coupe, then a Cox Chapparral 2E. Loved it. About 1977 a friend heard about a private club that started in the early '60s called MESAC. They had a huge layout in an old barn not far from the Forum in Inglewood. Bad neighborhood. They ran only scale stuff, 1/32 and 1/24. One guy had a small company with an industrial vac-u-form and molded all of the bodies. Other guys scrathbuilt body masters. Greenwood Corvettes, Porsche Carrera RSRs, Porsche 908, 917, Ferrari 312. Everything had to be scale including wheels and tires. Cars had to have interiors and driver figures. Some cars had battery powered lights because they ran enduros and turned the lights out for the "night" section. They had a bunch of classes. One was Trans-Am where the cars had to have hard plastic bodies from static kits. The property it was on was sold about 1978 and they had to pull everything out. No one had space to rebuild the track. Don't know where it is now. I still have a bunch of stuff, I'll shoot a couple of photos and post 'em if anybody wants a look.
My dad used to build his own. He had some sice stuff. Maybe if Slots of Doom happens, I can drag him out...
I have a couple hundred feet of eldon and strombecker track and 100+cars some wheelie dragsters and race cyclone comets ...I thought I was the only one left who liked this sort of thing I always liked the bigger scale cars better ... I still buy/hoard bits and pieces when I find them at garage sales... the ones for sale at the btt50'S swap were spendy tho ... recently found some unassembeled kits and extra eldon bodies Completly wore out 3 sets of Dodge Scat Pack Charger and Coronet dealership promo Eldon slot sets cars when they where offered through the dodge news letter..$14.95 A SET... 1968 I would set up a coarse and tape the control of one car on so it would go as fast as possible and still stay on the track.... then I would try to lap the running car with the other.. hours and hours of fun. SURE I HAD BROTHERS TO RACE BUT THEY JUST WANTED THEM TO CRASH .. thanks for the reminder of fun times paperdog
Thanks Dan... I still have all of my old slot cars, I might just drive up there and check it out!.. Dave Brisco
back when i was 12 or 13, that's about 13 years ago, we had one local place that had 3 tracks and a drag track. we all had decent setups(for kids at least) then one day it was gone. never found the guy, I guess he wasn't making enough to cover the strip mall's rent.
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