I crashed an AW slot car this morning so hard that the brushes were protruding from the bottom of the chasis. I had to take the arm out to get the brushes back in the car. The body was not damaged. Even my kids were amazed. I hope I did not start something.

Did you give it full throttle without letting off before the turn and smashed into the brick wall at the end of "Da" straight away. LOL

I am planning my layout so that my cars (under over acceleration) can land on or hit certain things when just going around the track without wrecking isn't enough of a thrill.


Keep on smashing them up and sooner or later you will break the body and then post some pics please! If you don't break something then you ain't racing it hard enough.

Bob...zilla

Years ago I crashed a MT sprint car so hard that I knocked both pick-up shoes off of it. I've bent more axles than I can count.

I'm kinda horrified about what I'm going to put here to chime along with oldblue.

I invited some teenagers over about a week ago and set out certain cars that I didn't think they would be able to break. Gee guess what, they broke almost all of them. The thing that just totally sickened me was that they broke my new toyslotcars chaparral's. Do you want to say I was just beside myself? I was horrified. I didn't think it would have been possible but after having literally yelled at them at (and no this is NOT a joke) the 30th time.... I finally told them to either drive the cars normal or go home. They thought it was hilarious to take and full throttle my brand new cars into a brick chimney. Those 'children' won't be coming back over to my house ever again to say the least. They want to bring their own cars to break... so be it, but don't touch mine. The frustrating thing is that you know they're just kids but it doesn't make it any easier when you've been decent & polite and everything else and they still refuse to listen..... some people's kids I guess.

Lesson learned.

Good news for our friends that are producing some awesome looking cars at toyracecars.com though.... I now have to re-procure those gorgeous chaparral's because of this little fiasco. LOL

Cheers,
Xence

Sorry to hear about your Chapparels.

There is something inside all of us that just wants to smash that little car to smithereens at the end of the straight. Some of us just keep it more controlled than others. I had one friend's kids over and his 4 year old just couldn't get enough smashing the car at the end of the straight. Didn't matter if we sat him out for a while he'd come right back and do the same thing then laugh uncontrollably. Luckily nothing important was broken. I have beaters for such "guests" to drive now and when they complain that their car has a broken wing or whatever I just suggest they are more than welcome to bring their own cars to run in future.

What they don't realize is 4 or 5 cars later you are down $100 or so.

We also had a new racer running his own vintage stuff once. At the end of each heat he would drill his car into the end wall. At first we thought it was jumping lanes or something but it was just "his way" of finishing up a race....some people just don't think the same way as the rest of us.

What they don't realize is 4 or 5 cars later you are down $100 or so.

Exactly. And let's face it. When we buy a car, it's typically not for the chassis but the body on it. And even if you could simply purchase another body, you/I/we could be looking at $10+ easily in most cases.

I have beaters for such "guests" to drive now.

Did he same for the little ones and guests who just love to crash. I don't care how the cars runs or looks. It goes so choose one from that group and have fun. I do tune and repair the chassis as needed so they run like LLs or TYCOS are supossed to. As far as the body, tuff. Put it on the slot and see if you can keep it in the slot.

:devil: rr

Yeah I learned my lesson really quick and I believe I'm going to be pickig up more LL's so that when people that only have a desire to put a car into a wall have put that same car into that same wall for the umpteenth time and they say hey I need another car..... there's the door.

F1nuts. What you were saying about losing approx. $100 is just absolutely dead on. That's approx. what I lost after that little fiasco. On sunday one of the 2 kids, that were just wasting my cars, parents came over to thank me for having them over. I responded with "well I'm glad he had a good time but next time he can bring his own cars over." I wasn't nasty, rude, or untruthful. I told it how it was. Unfortunately I doubt real highly that he will either get the point or that he'll come back over unless forced to.

I hate being like that but what am I supposed to do? I can't have people come over and cost me $100 every time they 'visit.'

ok well enough of this. As I said before. Lesson learned. :)

Hey so now that I DO have several wrecked cars I started looking around a bit more for some SRT's. I came across someone selling some at just ridiculous prices on ebay. They were doing the buy it now option and if you bought more than 1 the shipping was all inclusive. Actually I think we probably all know and love this guy Rob Budano. That guy has just killer deals if you look at what he has available. I'll be going to Bob Beers' show here on superbowl sunday in Long Island and Rob will be there. I have some money burning a hole in my pocket. Rob used to sell cars on there at X (depending on the car of course) and then charge $1 more for every extra piece. He has since stopped doing that and now has it so that anything up to 6 auctions is $6 for shipping. That is a real good deal in my opinion. Maybe others have a different take on it but that seems to be a pretty bang for the buck.

:)

Cheers,
Xence

I've got two nephews, one in the 8th grade, the other an 8 year old. The 8 year old can trip himself on level ground, and can spill a glass of anything for absolutely no reason at all. I've literally watched him do both acts many times :freak: He is the only one out of the 4 nephews / neices to routinely step in the dog crap in the back yard.

Anyone reading through the lines here, help... I'm going to need some beaters for him. I refuse to sacrifice any decent cars to his goofiness. Preferably, a car that sticks to the track and is slow. What should I be looking for? Reading some of the horror stories here, I don't know if I could be as tactful with him or his mother ;)

Personally I plan on going to kaybee or whatever other hobby shop that's local and pick up some real bottom end LifeLikes. I don't care for these cars but they're cheap and they seem to have a higher than usual tolerance to pain. I'm going to buy them as cheaply as I can so I don't have to worry about this sort of thing happening in the future.

My godchildren came over last week sometime (5 & 3 years old) and I gave them the lifelike cars. They did manage to break one of the 2 but that was after several smashes into a wall at rather high rates of speed. So for my purpsoses the life likes will be my sacrificial lambs. They stick reasonably well and I don't cringe when I see them fly off the track for yet the 90th time.

Hope that helps.

It does help, Xence, thanks. And when it comes down to brass tacks, I know I'm going to "wall" some cars myself every so often... so I plan on using some beaters on and off depending on my mood. I was in Kaybee and Toys-R-Us during the days leading up to Christmas, and I couldn't find any HO cars. I didn't know if it was a time-of-the-year issue, or whether they're not stocked in my area... but I know I'll be hunting around again in these stores now that we're past the holidays.

Of course, on Super Bowl Sunday I will be picking up a few cars at the show :p

Just give 'em Hot Wheels and tell em to go play on the floor.

My solution was to use 2 banked turns and just do a nascar track when the demons come to play. Its funny when they try to get the cars to fly and cant seem to get them to. LOL Sweet revenge! Have fun. Greg

A 3-year old...? For kids that young, I have a "wireless" Tomy controller I hand them and tell them they're helping control one of the cars. It takes a few minutes for them to figure out they're not doing anything, at which point I tell them, "Oh that's because you have to talk into it while you're squeezing the trigger so the driver can hear you." It can get pretty hilarious for the parents.

I have several Marchons that I let grade school age kids drive. The magnets are relatively strong on those and they are very competitive against parents running stock SRT and SG+ cars. I've also found that giving kids TJets with magnets (or a new TJet Ultra G) works similarly, especially if I give them a higher ohm controller. Younger kids actually WANT to compete with their parents so if you give them the chance, they'll try to keep their cars in the slot.

Many teens are more interested in showing off. They wreck things to stand out and be funny. Most could care less if they beat their parents. In fact, if their parents like the track, the teen will act like they don't just to irritate.

I've had no problem laying down the ground rules up front with teenagers. Comments like, "Please respect my stuff here. I put some good money into this and I'd like to keep it all nice. If I think some jerk is purposely trying to wreck my track or cars, I'll shut it down and we're done... and of course I'll look for an opportunity to pay them back sometime!" usually get some laughs but seem to sink in. I don't think being a pushover does me or them any good.

There's no way I'd let anyone (kids or adults) drive my nicer magnet cars unless they proved they could handle it with some cheapies first. Most can't unfortunately, which is why I've got a power supply on order that will let me turn down the voltage when rookies come over. Even so, I'm still not sure I'll be getting the nicer cars out.

Unfortunately TKSolver hit the nail directly on it's proverbial head. I don't have kids yet so I'm learning about teens now, and after the one incident I had with the punks from here on I'll be giving the "you can use but don't abuse" speech that tk just posted. You try to be decent but teen's really don't care they just wanna be cool in front of their friends. That pretty much sums it up.

I also found a good chunk of complete garbage cars that I got at various tag sales or whatever. Over 1/2 of them don't have the glass or look like someone ran them over with a very big hammer or .... you get the idea. I'm going through my collection now and putting those cars in a side case just for when other people come over so as not to wreck my last nerve when a person goes off the side.

My suggestion to save your sanity and cars when others are racing for te first time is to invest in a variable power supply. My 3 year old is able to keep my cars in the slot around my layout at a reduced voltage. I also only let him race tjets for awhile and if he wants a faster car, okay by me at a reduced voltage. Problem solved with the wee ones.
For the adults thats another story. Adjusting the p/s is fix #1 but a stern reminder as to how to drive a slot car...coast into a turn and accelerate into the straights....just like driving a real car. If they abuse the priviledge of racing my cars then i guess that I race alone against the clock. My stuff is exactly that "my stuff" and I like it in tact thank you.
RAy

When my Grandchildren wanted to race I knew they would be crashing,Sometimes people who wanted to race didn't want to turn the power down.I let the kids run tyco
us1 electric Trucking.They run slow but they are fun

Its also a good idea to let outsiders know you have direction switches... :o

http://marina.fortunecity.com/westindia/389/blownup.jpg