Real Nice Guys

I've just been watching the GP from Turkey.

I just can't believe how generous Mark and Sebastian have got. Giving away 43 points to poor, struggling Lewis and Jenson just like that!

Why can't other nations be as kind to our competitors in other competitions. Like Eurovision, for instance? (Please don't answer that one - I don't think I could bear to be reminded of just how bad our entry was in comparison to what was already a pretty lack-lustre bunch).

I'm off to pack some orders - it will at least remind me that some of you out there are really smart. Thanks for the orders guys (and girl).

My cousin's car's a cover girl now!

I got an e-mail Thursday night from my young (well, he is compared to me) cousin, Dave Robson. His 1970 Dodge Challenger has just been featured in this month's edition of Classic American, getting the full treatment: main picture on cover, double-page spread inside cover (contents/index pages) and a 5-page article on his re-build and tuning.

I know this doesn't have a lot to do with slot racing, but anyone who's into cars, even if Americana isn't your thing, has to be at least a little bit impressed by the standard of his work! It's not just show either - it turns in impressive performance figures too. Here's the magazine shots and article in full (in correct order, starting with the cover) so you can judge for yourself. He sent me them just as JPEGs rather than PDFs, but they are good enough rez to be able to read the article off them if you want to.

• Classic American - Cover: June 2010
• Inside Cover
• Article - first 2-page spread
• Article - second 2-page spread
• Article - final page

Nice one Dave, that is one very smart motor car!

First new page open and operating!

Check the Navbar and you'll see the link to our descriptive page with a short version of what each braid type is all about. Links will take you to our Auctiva Commerce store. We sell all these on eBay too and have done for a few years now.

Everyone is welcome to check our feedback - we're well proud of it!

Prices on our small (10 and 20 packs) are the same in each store, as is the post and pack, though our bulk packs (30 and 100 packs) are cheaper in the Auctiva store to compensate against our free post offer on their eBay equivalents. Since we only charge one single postal fee, anyone wanting multiple packs will save £1.00 per pack (or more on the 40mm) on every extra one purchased there (we think anyone buying more than one bulk pack deserves a bit of discount)!

How the idea finally dawned . . .

I had a number of circa-1990 scalextric cars, some accessories and quite a selection of spares left over from my shop amongst the boxes in the loft. Quite a few packs of spares for Tamiya R/C buggies, too. That sounded like a great way to bring in some much-needed revenue, so I joined eBay and started punting them out, two or three at a time, thinking "this is great". I now realise that I let a lot of my stock go much too cheap but I'm philosophical about that. Mistakes are made to be learned from.

What I did particularly notice was that I was getting a lot of orders for my little packs of the old 20mm pick-up braids, even though they carried a p&p cost which virtually doubled their price. Curious, I started asking customers why they didn't just pop into their local model shop for them and found out that the days I remembered from my years as a service agent were long gone and they no longer stocked spares for virtually everything they had ever made! Hence 20mm braids were a thing of the past . . . that set me thinking.

I was quickly running out of these braids, how do I replace them? I still have quite a few pre-1990 cars that use them and their sales show they're a popular item still. What suitable braids were on the market? How could I cut them fast enough to make production cost-effective without buying a costly machine that would make their price prohibitive?

As well as being a designer, I'd also doubled as production manager for the first six of my years at my last job. Let's just say I found the answer to that last problem (I'm keeping my secret)!

As for the braid, I searched the net and found several companies who were prepared to send me samples of copper braid between 3 and 4mm wide and ended up with no less than 14 different samples to test (steel braid is a non-starter as it's carbon content is drawn out by direct current every time you get an arc, getting deposited on the track).

The samples I received included both tinned (as most official Scalextric ones have been) and un-tinned braid, though right from my very first MRRC 'Airfix Clubman Specials' cars I had decided I preferred nice pure copper braids and have never had any cause to change my mind - it's not a lot of effort to keep them clean, espescially since I developed my range of track-cleaners. Just two strokes and they're clean! More about those in a future article.

I drew on my (far too many) years experience to set my parameters that would define how I wanted my braids to perform: They should conduct sufficiently well to carry the power picked up from the rails to the motor with no discernible voltage drop (I used 200mm lengths of braid to exaggerate any problem but, as I had reasonably expected, all 14 passed with flying colours and a considerable degree of 'overkill' at that)! They should put as much braid in contact with the rail as possible, under all conditions, to optimise the current flow to the motor (all braids using thicker strands went out on this one - the first strand that touched the track didn't bend and the rest were just passengers - the extra resistance was measurable on a multimeter). They should flex under light pressure sufficiently, even on the lightest-nosed cars, to allow the slot-guide maximum penetration into the slot when approaching a corner, but still keep full contact with the rail when the nose lifts under acceleration. They should also be sufficiently well damped for their weight to minimise bounce on uneven surfaces (dents or crossing track-joints). The finshed braid should be of reasonable cost (all were OK on this one) and have a working lifespan at least as good as the standard braid.

After test 3, I was left with my two thinnest braids, one tinned, the other un-tinned. Both were actually less than my minimum specified 3mm width. The untinned braid had come out slightly better than the tinned one (less tension in copper without its' tin-coating) but would it wear as well? The duration testing was carried out on my pair of long-suffering Mini 1275GT 'Clubman' cars (no magnets, skittish handling and loads of fun) and, after just a few hours, I knew I had my answer.

The tinned copper, which does have some advantages like not oxidising in air, tends to 'frizz' owing to the differing co-efficients of expansion of the two metals and, before long, it was not allowing the slot guide its' full required depth for best cornering abilities. It was much, much longer before the softer-surfaced copper began to wear.

Nearly three years later, I'm still not completely sure why the softer copper doesn't wear quickly (I suspect it is something to do with co-efficient of friction between dissimilar metals, but I'm not a metallurgist)! Customers, however did, and do, agree.

I bought the minimum quantity of braid they would sell me (they generally have to produce it specially for me) and tentatively offered them for sale in packs of four or ten braids. After a hesitant start in September/early October, they picked up during the course of the month and soon customers were asking if I did them for the more recent cars as well. Again, I was forced to ask "why?" The official ones certainly were available in the shops. The answers fell into three categories: "Our local model shop has stopped selling Scalextric in protest against them supplying TOYS'R'US cheaper (I don't know whether that actually is the case) and they don't stock the small spares like braids." "Our local model shop has shut down." "Yes, we can get them from the shop, but yours are better!"

As you might possibly guess, I really liked that answer and my Ferrari and Benetton, which both used the early 'shoe' type of Easy-Fit guide, were put to work testing a longer 27mm braid, which is still our best seller to date as it's perfect for the current 'Disc' guide too.

By December, I knew that I was no longer just selling off what I had in my loft and registered Classic Toys & Models as a business with the Revenue and Customs people. It has grown consistently each year, which suggests to me that Scalextric and other slot-car racing is truly 'recession-proof' - it's just as cheap (or expensive) as you want to make it! It is also highly recommended by several digital owners who tell me that it has cured their cars' ID-loss problems they had been suffering (presumably interference caused by excessive arcing).

Episode 1: How it all ended, part 1 - Where it all began

It's the early 1990's. Picture a man in his early 40's, who's been steeped in the tonic of mecnanised sport ever since he's been able to toddle and has hedonistically pursued every financially available avenue, and one or two others that weren't, is about to give it all up to embark upon life's greatest adventure. A new partner, an even newer baby daughter and a decent-ish job replacing the uncertainties of his own small business in the shaky years of post-Thatcher Britain. It's time to settle down, isn't it? . . . Isn't it?

Roll the clock forward almost 20 years. You see the same man, now in his late 50's, his cup overflowing with the love and affection of those who surround him, but his job's deserted him and there's a feeling that all is not quite right with this particular corner of his garden of earthly delights. There's a kind of black pigeon-hole, marked 'unfinished business', which is supposed to hold all of youth's unconsumated dreams.

But it's empty. After all, it's a black hole. It's in the job description. Where do things that fall into black holes go to? . . . Ah-ha! The loft, of course! And, of course, the subject here is me.

My loft did have a light that I'd installed for access and storage purposes when we'd first moved in, but even replacing the 60-watt bulb with a 100-watt one, hardly illuminated the all-consuming void past the first stack of corrugated boxes. This was the one containing every (or very nearly every) weekly copy of Autosport from 1967 to 1991. Then a little case containing my old 750 Motor Club magazines. Above that, some shelves carried boxes containing some of the very last things I'd raced: PB Maxima, MRX, Tamiya Egress, Schumacher CAT2000 (Cecil had been a little impatient waiting for the millennium to arrive and used the name a little early)!

But it was the next pile of boxes that stopped me in my track. A pile I knew to contain what I conveniently referred to as 'the Scalextric'. It was, in fact, a very mixed bag of various makes of 1/32 scale slot cars, along with the remnants of a 4-lane track (using the Italian Polistil track as it had ECRA standard slot depth and a little more width for room to slide without dropping a wheel over the edge) that I'd had in a mezzanine level above the sales area of my model shop in the 1980's. To ensure adequate power got through, the American Parma hand throttles were supplied with their current via a couple of 12-volt drill transformers.

The buzz was immediate. As long as you have cars, track, power-supply and friends, you don't need anything else to go racing - even its' effect on the electricity bill is negligible. Whatever else you have to shed as you go through life, NEVER PART WITH YOUR SCALEXTRIC. Like Linus' blanket, you may need it.

Three years on and I'm still here, but I now the make small performance enhancing parts for Scalextric cars, sell replacement headlamp bulbs (including right back to the miniature Edison-Screw ones in the very early Escorts and Porsches) and produce a range of handy track-cleaning tools, all of which I distribute through both eBay and my Classic Toys & Models online site and its' linked Auctiva Commerce store.

My 17 years as a model shop proprietor (see profile) had been a great experience. Although I'd been a model enthusiast ever since my first Airfix Spitfire kit at 5 years old, I learned a lot more in my years in the shop. I made a lot of friends, some of whom I still bump into in supermarkets. Every one of them still asks me when I'm coming back into the trade. The answer is I've started dabbling again, but this time it will be principally online.

I would also like to think that my experience would not be wasted, so I will try to pass on some of it with a series of illustrated articles, which I hope will be of help to any of you who may be interested. I'll try to have the first one ready in the course of the coming week.