While throwing things away during the last home cleanup I found a carton box containing my old slot car racing track from the 1980s.
This page contains pictures and videos of the minor restoration I did to get it into working condition.
This slot car racing track dates back to 1980 so it's really old, but when I opened the box, I found that it's in better condition than I expected for its 34 years of age.
It doesn't have that much amount of rust on the metal tracks and the plastics are in good shape. There are some broken road signs, probably because I broke them when I was still playing with it 34 years ago, but all their parts are still there waiting to be glued back together.
The slot cars weren't so lucky and are in bad shape. Their rubber tires dried up and feel like plastic and produce no traction on the road track. They are quite fine for drifting :-). The other things that almost didn't survive are the copper strips connecting the power to the motor. They need to be replaced with longer ones.
This is the final picture when everything was working, except the speed controllers that are rusted beyond repair, which is a nice excuse to build a linear controller with a high power BJT.
To give you an idea how bad the contacts from the metal tracks to the car were, play the following video that was recorded right after assembling everything from the box where it has been stored for the last 30 years.
And the final video with the metals parts clean and two of the cars ready to run.
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Published on Monday 2014/06/30, last modified on Monday 2015/12/28