With the recent passing of Ronnie Sox & Dick Landy, and the interest shown in them on this board, I thought some of you might like to see the fully functional and fully landscaped 1/43 scale slotcar dragstrip I built in my home in 2003 - 2004:
I took these pictures before it was completely done and there is a lot more detail now, but you get the idea. I started with two of the old Shutdown/Scat City sets available from dealers in 1969/1970. I gutted the mechanical controllers and custom built an electronic setup with two computer chips that control each lane and talk to each other. The Xmas tree was completely scratch built from plastic sheet and channel, led's, and mechanical pencil tips for the light housings. It, along with the scoreboards, are fully functional. The scoreboards give ET, RT, and MPH. There are five infra-red sensors in each lane and I measure the timing and speed just like the NHRA does. The controller is a 4-speed shifter. Each "gear" controls a section of the track. To get to the end you have to go through all four gears. If you shift early or late you lose power and coast until you power up the section of track you are in. There is reverse so you don't have to chase the cars. If you hit the shift points right the cars go pretty fast - the cars can do 20 feet from a standing start in under four seconds with a good driver.
The cars are all heavily modified to represent the Pro-stocks of the day. The custom parts and graphics were designed by me. There are seven cars so far:
Sox 69 GTX
Grotheer 69 Roadrunner
Landy 70 Challenger
Motown Missile 71 Challenger
Motown Missile 72 Cuda
Sox 72 Cuda
Landy 72 Challenger
If you look closely you'll see that my Dick Landy figure has a cigar. There are also Ronnie Sox and Buddy Martin figures. I sent Dick some pictures a while ago and he thought it was damn cool. I was hoping he'd come see it if he came to Phoenix for an NHRA event, but he never made it. All of the cars in the parking lot, all the support vehicles, and the cars in the pits are Mopars. All of the haulers are Mopar drag related.
It took four months full time to build the track, not including the customizing of cars or the design which I came up with over the course of about a year.
-Jeff
