Another Mopar Off My Bucket List - Barracuda Fastback
More progress has been made on the Charger but I'll wait to post about that until after I have a chance to get some pictures taken.
Meanwhile, I do have updated pictures of the basement racetrack. Before I took Spencer's Roadrunner back to him I'd seen that someone from Iowa had posted a bunch of Carrera slot car track on Craigslist. Although it was a few more hours more out of my way, - it was a lot closer than it would have been if I wasn't already in the Des Moines area. I cringed at the thought of putting more $$ in the downstairs setup but they were selling it at pennies on the dollar. - AND IT WAS DIGITAL!!
I had dreamt of converting my track to digital but I thought the cost was way too prohibitive. This was almost everything I was going to need plus so much extra track that I could actually make a second large digital track if I wanted to.
Right now I've got it back up and running. It's a lot like building a car in that there always seems to be a few more tweaks you'd like to make. At present I've combined two layouts together. I have an oval track in the middle with a road course around it.
The oval course is an analog setup that I can only run two cars at a time on. I painted it brown to resemble a dirt track.
The road course is much longer. I love the digital setup. The ability to run eight cars concurrently is awesome. I used two lane change tracks that allow cars to swap lanes if you choose to by holding in a button on the controllers when you approach those track sections. Computer controlled 'ghost cars' change lanes randomly. You can turn the car lights on & off with the controllers as well. These cars even have brake lights! It's pretty wild.
Among the stuff I'd gotten with the track was a pair of pit lanes. - Yup. - Not one, but two. Now if I choose, the track gives you the option to run the cars in a 'real fuel mode'. That means that the cars will require you to pit and refuel. With two separate pit areas it's much easier for multiple cars to pit at the same time. The fuel mode can be disabled if you don't want to use it by flipping a switch on the track's control unit.
The maximum speed and braking strength of each car can be adjusted to suit your tastes/abilities so it's possible to slow things down for younger kids that would have difficulty keeping their cars on the track.
I haven't set up a pace car yet but it's another option. It will come out of a pit lane before a race and automatically return once the race is underway. It will also come out if you press a button to trigger a caution event and return automatically when press the button again to signal the caution is over.
I'd always enjoyed slot car ever since I was a little kid but this is WAY cooler than anything I ever had back then.
Two of the controllers that came with it are wireless and they have a recharging base that attaches to the track.
It also came with one driver's display that allows you to see your fuel level as you race and will act as a tachometer too. With only one, you need to swap out which car's display you're viewing. It's sort of a pain in the behind so I'm hoping to add one for each driver.
The blimp and animated signs are back but I didn't install any of the regular street lights that I'd previously ran. Drilling all those holes and wiring them was a ton of work. Instead I opted to string several strands of L E D's in strategic areas.
I kept the cardboard grandstand that I'd made and the concessions building that I'd made out of Lexan. But - I did have to relocate them to accommodate the new layout.
I had a ton of trees before that were scattered around the old course. After the addition of so much more track I relocated them to more of a wooded area towards the back of the layout.
I'm not sure that painting the inside oval looks the best but I guess I'll live with it. Some of you might remember that this Carrera track is made to accept both 1/32 and 1/24 scale cars. One other thing I had wanted to do for some time was modify some 1/24 scale cars to run on my setup. I finally got that done too. In a couple of nights I whipped together a pair of Dodge Darts. I shot a light film of brown paint across the fronts of them to simulate dirt from the track and tried to make tire scuff marks on the sides
. They've got full interiors but I chose not to install the motors.
All of the fancy digital options are connected to the road course. This display tower shows which place each car is in as they race.
I did keep the spectator 'jumbo-tron' but it got relocated also.
The old pit area was retained inside the oval track with little change.
It's a bit of a crowded layout. There isn't much room for other additions. I used a raised 'bridge track' section so that I had enough area to route the digital pits. They are actually below the raised track. I installed L E D's beneath the raised track to light those areas up. My camera does a poor job of showing detail and doesn't accurately show the way the lighting looks on the track. The darker images are actually much lighter in reality but when I use the camera's flash it sort of drowns out the effect of all the L E Ds. All together there are over 200 lights on the track.
A few more miscellaneous pictures.
There's a 40" television/monitor hanging on the wall behind the track. I have it set up so I can run a feed from a video camera aimed at the racing OR display car themed movies from a laptop OR display data from the digital track such as drivers positions, lap times, drivers pictures, all the vehicles fuel levels, etc, etc...
More progress has been made on the Charger but I'll wait to post about that until after I have a chance to get some pictures taken.
Meanwhile, I do have updated pictures of the basement racetrack. Before I took Spencer's Roadrunner back to him I'd seen that someone from Iowa had posted a bunch of Carrera slot car track on Craigslist. Although it was a few more hours more out of my way, - it was a lot closer than it would have been if I wasn't already in the Des Moines area. I cringed at the thought of putting more $$ in the downstairs setup but they were selling it at pennies on the dollar. - AND IT WAS DIGITAL!!
I had dreamt of converting my track to digital but I thought the cost was way too prohibitive. This was almost everything I was going to need plus so much extra track that I could actually make a second large digital track if I wanted to.
Right now I've got it back up and running. It's a lot like building a car in that there always seems to be a few more tweaks you'd like to make. At present I've combined two layouts together. I have an oval track in the middle with a road course around it.
The oval course is an analog setup that I can only run two cars at a time on. I painted it brown to resemble a dirt track.
The road course is much longer. I love the digital setup. The ability to run eight cars concurrently is awesome. I used two lane change tracks that allow cars to swap lanes if you choose to by holding in a button on the controllers when you approach those track sections. Computer controlled 'ghost cars' change lanes randomly. You can turn the car lights on & off with the controllers as well. These cars even have brake lights! It's pretty wild.
Among the stuff I'd gotten with the track was a pair of pit lanes. - Yup. - Not one, but two. Now if I choose, the track gives you the option to run the cars in a 'real fuel mode'. That means that the cars will require you to pit and refuel. With two separate pit areas it's much easier for multiple cars to pit at the same time. The fuel mode can be disabled if you don't want to use it by flipping a switch on the track's control unit.
The maximum speed and braking strength of each car can be adjusted to suit your tastes/abilities so it's possible to slow things down for younger kids that would have difficulty keeping their cars on the track.
I haven't set up a pace car yet but it's another option. It will come out of a pit lane before a race and automatically return once the race is underway. It will also come out if you press a button to trigger a caution event and return automatically when press the button again to signal the caution is over.
I'd always enjoyed slot car ever since I was a little kid but this is WAY cooler than anything I ever had back then.
Two of the controllers that came with it are wireless and they have a recharging base that attaches to the track.
It also came with one driver's display that allows you to see your fuel level as you race and will act as a tachometer too. With only one, you need to swap out which car's display you're viewing. It's sort of a pain in the behind so I'm hoping to add one for each driver.
The blimp and animated signs are back but I didn't install any of the regular street lights that I'd previously ran. Drilling all those holes and wiring them was a ton of work. Instead I opted to string several strands of L E D's in strategic areas.
I kept the cardboard grandstand that I'd made and the concessions building that I'd made out of Lexan. But - I did have to relocate them to accommodate the new layout.
I had a ton of trees before that were scattered around the old course. After the addition of so much more track I relocated them to more of a wooded area towards the back of the layout.
I'm not sure that painting the inside oval looks the best but I guess I'll live with it. Some of you might remember that this Carrera track is made to accept both 1/32 and 1/24 scale cars. One other thing I had wanted to do for some time was modify some 1/24 scale cars to run on my setup. I finally got that done too. In a couple of nights I whipped together a pair of Dodge Darts. I shot a light film of brown paint across the fronts of them to simulate dirt from the track and tried to make tire scuff marks on the sides
. They've got full interiors but I chose not to install the motors.
All of the fancy digital options are connected to the road course. This display tower shows which place each car is in as they race.
I did keep the spectator 'jumbo-tron' but it got relocated also.
The old pit area was retained inside the oval track with little change.
It's a bit of a crowded layout. There isn't much room for other additions. I used a raised 'bridge track' section so that I had enough area to route the digital pits. They are actually below the raised track. I installed L E D's beneath the raised track to light those areas up. My camera does a poor job of showing detail and doesn't accurately show the way the lighting looks on the track. The darker images are actually much lighter in reality but when I use the camera's flash it sort of drowns out the effect of all the L E Ds. All together there are over 200 lights on the track.
A few more miscellaneous pictures.
There's a 40" television/monitor hanging on the wall behind the track. I have it set up so I can run a feed from a video camera aimed at the racing OR display car themed movies from a laptop OR display data from the digital track such as drivers positions, lap times, drivers pictures, all the vehicles fuel levels, etc, etc...