Problem Resolved

Do you by chance have one cross-over track in the outside lanes?

No, no crossovers, my thoughts are that I must have a short in one of the trck pieces, just don't want to have to pull the whole track apart and test each bit, was hoping there was a short cut.

what do you use for power supplying ? if you use the stock power rail, perhaps there's a problem on it. The weird thing is that the problem appears on lane 1 and 4. If there were any problem on power rail, the issue should be visible between the two lanes on the same rail part.

Yeh, well I am stuck, it doesn't matter which hand control I use on the one power rail it drives both cars.

if you are using more than 1 track with the controller plugins on the lanes in question, you may have them crossed which would make the 1 controller work for both lanes.....

I am using two power tracks on each lane, but have the controllers pluged into one, one the inside and one on the outside, the other two power tracks are on the other side of the track to boost the power lag.

Do have one of the power packs plugged into where one of the controllers are supposed to go ?

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Ben has described the cause of the problem.

If you use more than one terminal track make sure you maintain the same exact orientation of the power tracks with respect to the lanes. For example, if lane 4 is on the outside furthest away from the power/controller connectors on the terminal track piece it must always be there wherever you have a power track in the circuit. Because of the way the power feeds are shared on the stock terminal tracks you cannot use them as a 15" straight track piece unless you maintain the orientation. If you replace the extra power tracks with 15" straights, I bet the problem goes away.

Tomy track has very good electrical characteristics. Unless you are getting dead or slow spots it's very unlikely you need extra taps on a floor layout that just using the track that came with the set.

Sounds very good in theory but I still have two cars on the inside lanes running at the same time with one hand piece. Is it posible to have a short between the two lanes on a piece of track?

Replace or remove the extra terminal tracks and then we can talk about short circuit theory.

Done, but it still pwers both cars.

It sounds like maybe a bad terminal track . Try the inside terminal track on the outside .

Unplug both sides of track from your terminal track.

Do you still have the same problem on just the terminal track?

Rich

Is it posible to have a short between the two lanes on a piece of track?

Only on the terminal track. The rails on the regular track pieces are way too far apart to have even the remote possibility of a short.

I assume you are plugging the power pack into the center jack and the controllers into the outside jack.

I also assume you only have one and only one terminal track in the layout per lane-pair. I assume you replaced the extra terminal track with a regular 15" straight.

Like NTxSlotCars said, just apply power and controllers to the terminal track by itself. If both lanes are shorted together in the isolated case you have a defective terminal track. Could happen, but if you have spares you should be up and running quickly and you can get RaceMasters to replace the defective piece.

As I read your responses, I understand that you have two terminal tracks (on opposite sides of the circuit) for two of the lanes and two more terminal tracks (on opposite sides of the circuit) for the other two lanes. For the two lanes that are both being run by one controller, are the terminal tracks both facing the same direction? By that I mean - when looking at the terminal track and having the plugs module closest to you, do the cars enter from the same side, say, the left side, and then exit to the right? The problem might be one terminal track is installed reverse to the other, causing the 'short'.

The terminal track piece is either installed backwards from the other terminal piece, or it has a short.

Disconnect each terminal track from the layout, plug both controllers into each piece individually, and if you have a short it will be the one where the controllers power both lanes. If that doesn't happen, you have the terminal tracks crossed on the layout and need to orient them the same way, i.e. if the cars enter terminal 1 on the short end, they must also enter terminal 2 on the short end, not the long end.

You should be able to get this sorted out no problem. :thumbsup:

I took the power track out and ran both cars on it by itself. It works fine so I gues now I need to pull the inner track apart and connect each piec one at a time to see which piece has a short.

Please post a picture if you find a regular track piece with the lanes shorted. It would be the first one ever. Thanks.

Rest assured you can all sleep well tonight I have found the problem. It pays to check each piece of track you buy second hand, someone had joined the lanes together with a wire, probably to run a power pack or something, removed this piece of track and all is great, both me and the kids are happy are about to start our first four lane race on the loungeroom floor. Thanks to everybody for their help, this is a great site. Next question is what is available for four lane lap counting? Once again thanks to all.

To have lap counters, you need a layout with a gap between the tracks. That's where you can put the lap counters. Four chicane pieces would make space for counters and keep the lengths equal for all.

Mystery solved! Glad to hear you are back in business and serving up racing goodness on all 4 lanes. As to lap counters, as already mentioned, the current mechanical lap counters from Tomy and AutoWorld require separation between the lane pairs due to the configuration of the counter track pieces. The Tomy counter is based on a 15" track piece and the AW one is based on a 9" track piece.

Tomy is redesigning their electronic lap counter/timer system but I have no experience with this unit.

There are a number of PC based lap counter/timer systems on the market at various price points. They all require an electrical sensor of some kind in each lane to trigger the software application running on the PC. These systems are more geared towards permanent table top race setups. The sensors vary from magnetic reed switches, to photoelectric sensors, to special sections of track wired to make the car act like a contact closure ("dead strip"). Other than the "dead strip" approach these sensors are fairly delicate and would not lend themselves to temporary setups on the floor. It would be quite feasible to fabricate portable dead strip tracks, say with mini electrical jacks embedded into the track piece itself to provide attachment to a computer. Definitely doable, but could be a bit expensive since a computer, software, and interface cabling is needed. Fabricating the portable dead strip timing sections would require some rail cutting and soldering of wires for the dead trigger segments, jumpers around the dead segments, and wiring in the jacks for the PC connection.

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OK That's just annoying.

I put on my kid's 3D glasses and there's a hidden message!!! :thumbsup: