[Closed] Scalextric lighting upside down question

Sounds like something Colin Furze would build. If you figure it out let us know!

Wont they just fall off?

Probably easier to staple the kids to the ceiling.

A PC racing game projected onto the ceiling instead?

You know Scalextric cars still require gravity to stay on the track yes?

Turn your house upside down. Velcro the kids into their beds.

Magnets and stuff. It is late, don't piss on my idea right now

Noisy whirring lit-up fascinating moving cars. ON THE CEILING.

Even if you could*, wouldn't this be the perfect anti-sleeping strategy?

*Which FWIW, I think would be extremely troublesome to do.

The magnets would probably short out the tracks/ voltage.

I like your style though.

Circular track in the form of a wheel rim on the ceiling, spin it up with a motor, centrifuge, job done?

Health and safely might get a bit "flamboyant" though.

sockpuppet
Full Member
Noisy whirring lit-up fascinating moving cars. ON THE CEILING.

Even if you could*, wouldn’t this be the perfect anti-sleeping strategy?

My solution is highly likely to cause concussion so it would solve that issue.

What you need there is a track on the floor and a really big mirror.

Though getting kids accustomed to ceiling mirrors might bring unexpected rewards later in life.

The magnets would probably short out the tracks/ voltage.

Erm, have you seen a slot car recently? They’ve got pretty powerful magnets these days.

Yes but to get the tail end wagging around on the corners you can't have a "key" in the slot at the back so any magnet might well slide across both rails.😁

Put it the correct way up, but right around the outside of the room?

I thought about doing that with hornby railway for my lad. Using a series of suspension bridges.

Standard car magnates aren't powerful enough to hold them upside down. Not sure if the extra magnetic force required will put too much of a load on the drive.

Cars are quite heavy and noisy BTW.

It will either be a brilliant success or a magnificent failure. Either way you have to try it!

Standard car magnates

Henry Ford?

TWODogs - Nice try and made me smile but my inner STW pedant firces this replay. The Standard Motor Company Limited was a motor vehicle manufacturer, founded in Coventry, England, in 1903 by Reginald Walter Maudslay.

was it TCR cars that didn't have the fin to go in a slot, just magnets that held them to a track and passed on the power? and I'm sure there was one (maybe TCR) that went upside down

WCA IS A GENIUS

TWODogs – Nice try and made me smile but my inner STW pedant firces this replay. The Standard Motor Company Limited was a motor vehicle manufacturer, founded in Coventry, England, in 1903 by Reginald Walter Maudslay.

nice. it was the best I could come up with at short notice..was trying to think of someone more contemporary

TCR TrackLock used to have narrower corner channels to keep the cars on track, which had a t shaped fin underneath that slotted in the track, the straights were "normal" though, so the cars would still fall out if upside down.

You could suspend the track?

I've been thinking about this all morning you bastard.

I think it would be hard with off the shelf Scalextric track but you could make something with a home made MDF, generic slot car track.

You could hide a metal tube under(above?) the MDF and use it like one of those overhead conveyor tracks you see in actual car factories.

Embed the little unit in the car so it's suspended from the bearings. Adjust the tension so you can get enough traction without crushing the power.

You are actually going to build this right?

@sharkattack, that's way over the top (see what I did there?) - it's perfect for WCA. I look forward to the "Are you bored enough to watch me machine my own bearing carriers" YouTube video.

What happens when they crash and drop onto your sons skull?

What happens when they crash and drop onto your sons skull?

Safety car conditions. No overtaking until he's left the room.

[i]What happens when they crash and drop onto your sons skull?[/i]

I don't have kids so it would be other peoples children so that isn't an issue

I don’t have kids so it would be other peoples children so that isn’t an issue

it gets better. I'm going to build this insance things to amnuse kids I don't even have

sir, I doff my cap

Or keep the cars on the floor and duct tape the kids to the ceiling?

Can you add a huge wing to the cars giving them loads of down-force, like a proper F! car. If it goes fast enough it'll stay stuck to the road even upside down.

The simpler answer would be to just have some lights chasing around. No need for the car bit at all. Much easier to build, less power, less noise, less to fall off and maim a child. You can get chasing fairy lights or get a string (or two) of Neopixels and you can program your own "race" sequence.

You get radio controlled cars with powerful suction that drive on walls/ceiling etc. They are great till battery dies

my inner STW pedant firces this replay. The Standard Motor Company Limited was a motor vehicle manufacturer, founded in Coventry, England, in 1903 by Reginald Walter Maudslay.

Oh, well played.

was it TCR cars that didn’t have the fin to go in a slot, just magnets that held them to a track and passed on the power?

I thought the way TCR worked was to have a slight left/right bias on the wheels to keep them pressed up against side barriers on the track? No idea how power worked though; induction?

and I’m sure there was one (maybe TCR) that went upside down

Tyco.

totally overthinking this thread. Scalextric wall of death is all you need. Get the fastest car you can, and build the track vertically around the edge of the room. (You may need to move into a lighthouse or other circular room for this to work)

There's a terrible lack of ambition on this thread. You want to build one of these...

I had a Tyco racing set; I always wanted the wall driving bit for christmas or a birthday but alas remain disappointed. They were tiny cars with strong magnets and would work upside down without issue.

There’s a terrible lack of ambition on this thread. You want to build one of these…

That's amazing. But dude, gloves?

I thought the way TCR worked was to have a slight left/right bias on the wheels to keep them pressed up against side barriers on the track? No idea how power worked though; induction?

TCR had 3 rails sticking just proud of the track level. Outer 2 were channels 1 and 2, centre must be 0V. And the cars had 2 sprung brass pickups in middle and either L or R. Probably much the same as Scalectrix, but without the slot? No induction, just simple contacts. Unless they made a special version later?

TCR also had no control. Max power in to a corner and Newton's laws win 😉 Eventually instead of trying to race for a win, which is impossible when the motor performance of 2 cars vary so much, the contest is to see how far one can eject the car from the track across the bedroom floor.

Used to have the Truck racing TCR set. With the trailers attached there was no way anything was going to stay on track.

It used to be claimed that an F1 car could drive on the ceiling due to amount of groundforce it created. Couldn't you just get the cars to go fast enough?

Might ne easier than faffing about with magnets and the like. Of course, little Johny might think otherwise when a toy car embeds itself into his head at 200mph.

Erm, have you seen a slot car recently? They’ve got pretty powerful magnets these days.

Which renders the whole concept of slot racing stupid.

...apart from the fact that it doesn't.

Magnates on mine are set differently from car to car to give different handling characteristics.

Pfft.

Which renders the whole concept of slot racing stupid

If you’re racing, most clubs require the magnets to be removed. Some motors have stronger magnetic pull than others too.

TCR had 3 rails sticking just proud of the track level. Outer 2 were channels 1 and 2, centre must be 0V. And the cars had 2 sprung brass pickups in middle and either L or R. Probably much the same as Scalectrix, but without the slot? No induction, just simple contacts. Unless they made a special version later?

Seems I might be misremembering I thought it was a flat track.

You can see it in action here, close-up of the track about halfway through the video.

From memory the rails on TCR track were about 1mm proud of the surface.

A mate had one. One of the cars was slightly quicker than the other so it was impossible to beat it. He just held the trigger down until he won. As it was his set nobody else was allowed to use the quicker car.

It all got very dull within about 5 minutes.

Matchbox Race and Chase on the other hand was the absolute cat's ass! IF you could get it to work.

I had a Tomy AFX 'Daredevil Rally' set. The magnets in the cars (a Peugeot 205 and a Golf GTI) would hold them to the track upside down. We used to build layouts with a section of track that went up the wall and across horizontally.