Just curious as to what the philosophy is in manufacturing bank turns with out the molded on retaining wall?

Aurora had it right with their Daytona bank turn from the seventies. It had a nice molded on wall. But then Tomy gave the bank turn a whirl and left the wall off!

Yesterday, I was at the local hobby shop and saw Scalextric's 1/32 scale bank sets (R2 and R3). They left any molded on wall off as well. I just stood there staring and imagining a four lane bank.........would a car be able to stay on the 4th outside lane without coming off? Without a molded on wall, increased outer apron or a way to add guardrail I choose to not buy them.

Does anybody else find this frustrating. I have tried to clip gaurdrail on Tomy's banks till I am just about ready to give up on bank turns!

Jim Norton
Huntsville, Alabama

Tyco had two available in the seventies as well. These had the wall and also extra at the top for oversteer and at the bottom to help the car hang on.

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c394/tycobro/TycoHighBanks.jpg

I built my own wall. 1/8 white card stock, grey paint, posters from my computer ...... voila. It looks good and works well. Give it a shot. mj

A molded wall on a curve would assume that the curve is the outermost curve. You wouldn't want a wall on the 9" bank because you may want to put the 12" bank on the outside.

Granted there is no 15" bank at the moment, so a 12" bank is the largest. The best option would be for a seperate apron which could clip to the outside.

The Lifelike 12" bank does have the outside wall molded in.

Joe

Everytime I considered trying to make walls for the bank I never considered 90 degrees to the floor. I always considered 90 degrees to the banked surface.

Trying to create something 90 degrees to the track surface is a big 3 dimensional geometry problem as the surface curves and angles.

Your method makes it so simple now!

Thanks for the new idea.

Jim Norton
Huntsville, Alabama