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The Lost Tracks...


axman

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Thanks Phil.. never had the chance to drive on that track.. only a few laps with a rental when I installed it. I cant really remember the smaller track.. was is sort of a bent or lazy 8? By the way.. The Shelmore track you guys drive on looks great in the pics.

Edited by axman
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AXMAN....i had no idea of the amount of tracks and input into australian slot car heritage you have done. its bloody unbelievable.

 

if you opened up an 'AUST SLOT CAR HISTORY MUSEAUM', and it had all the pics, all the stories, all the dramas that you have been involved with along with lots of old slot cars sets and trivial stuff that you have so much of, on display .....i would be your first customer.

 

maybe even put a glass or bronze statue of your self out the front. This can be MECCA for all slot car enthusiasts in Australia.

 

think about it.

 

 

Shed People Mutual Admiration Society

2 times Australian National Champion

1991-Flexicar 1999- Group 12 Sedan

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Thanks JP.. but give the bronze statue a miss. :ph34r:

I, like a lot of racers of my vintage have a long history of slot car adventures and I suppose because I built and ran so many tracks over the years I have a few more stories than most. I know my mate Garry J will say "dont encourage him" but I'm often at the crossroads whether to post more track pics of stuff I've built or not. I know as a racer, I love looking at track pics, especially the Euro stuff. So... apart from a whole bunch of local stuff there is a series of portable promotion tracks, fibreglass tracks, and tracks I've exported to places as far away as Taiwan and Malaysia that most in Australia would have never seen. They are'nt really the lost tracks as far as Australian racers are concerned but could be of interest to the racers on this forum which I guess, is my museum, so thanks again, and as long as racers want to see track stuff I'll post.

Regards,

Kim

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Err, Garry you want me to show them the BIG footage tracks... :lol: Garry's referring to some of the tracks I sent over to Asia.. Most were 7 lanes with 100mm lane spacing... ( if you're wondering why 7 - how does a short chinese kid reach over 8 ? :wacko:)

This one is part of a series that went to China and Taiwan. The tracks were designed so they could be extended in either direction. You might wonder how did Kim get to sell tracks to China.. Easy. Slotcars had been "underground" too long and I figured by putting a track in a high profile location like Grundy's on the Gold Coast every plane load of new tourists discovered slotcar racing - Australia and overseas. THats how the Chinese connection happened. While dad was gambling at the casino his kids would be racing on the track... and then pestering dad to have one at home. All all about money. One time I had a Chinese family sit ALL day in front of my shop.. I wondered what they were doing and me being the curios type went over. They were counting heads to see how much money the track was turning over! The thing is, it was summer holidays so while every other track in Australia was closed the Gold Coast was booming with tourists. Yep, that guy alone ordered 5 tracks. 3 went to Taipai, and 2 into Kaoshung (Taiwan) Those trips were interesting.. the guy kept booking me into "man hotels" but thats another story.

 

And no, this one was'nt an outside track... I just bolted it together to test it before it went in the shipping container...

 

QHiHxwd.jpg"Naked Track" Assembled to see if everything fits. It now gets taken apart, legs and sections numbered, painted, braided and wired, then loaded into the shipping container. When this one was built around 1995 it was cheaper to send a shipping container to Taiwan than Tasmania!

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Yep.. Nope.. well sort of a crossover Garry. I had to keep every thing parallel and minimise ramp up and down to achieve flexibility of shortnening the track if required.

It was alway a worry trying to decipher Chinese plans.. They just could'nt understand the difference between footprint required for track or room size with note's as to location of doors, windows, posts etc.. I arrived with one track to go in a department store in Taipei and they had omitted to tell me about the lift doors opening right where the "esses" went.. yep that track was shortened.. and the extra pieces used as window display!

 

P.S. me and Noel are team Slot Dog now! see clue.

 

UMm0WVP.jpg

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Hi Jason...I sold a base version to a guy at Boonah Qld in the late 90's. The track would have been an ideal Scale track.. and yes.. you had to break for the dipper.. in fact, everywhere. The Boonah track is one of the last commercial tracks I built for Australian use and certainly would be a great find. Next time you're out that way you should ask around... it would be a great find. Here's part of a flyer I had at the time showing the shortened version...

Garry J does a design more suited to todays 1/32 and 1/24th Scale also that you can swap around but has a lot more options.

 

 

rFzU2tn.jpg

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This one went to East Malaysia.. a place called Kota Kinabalu, Saba, Bornio. One rainy night I get a call from a tour guide operator.. He had a client that had travelled all the way to Australia to see the track at Grundy's but by now it had closed down because the Grundy organisation could'nt come to a rental agreement with the new Japanese owners. Sad day really seeing all the rides and equipment auctioned off and all the licensed operators losing their livelyhood. Anyway, I reluctantly drove to the coast to meet this guy at an expensive hotel and he grills me to make sure i'm really the main man.. that is, I am actually the builder. I mus'nt have a track builders face because the guy seems unsure. Finally he produces a photo copy of a photo copy of a photo copy of one of my tracks and its some kind of sales brochure in Chinese and its got a photo of my daughter (the little girl in the pink dress in one of the above photo's). Happily I had the original photo with me and we start to talk business. The first surprise was he immediately agreed to my first high price of about $25k, (Chinese always try to beat down the $$$) the second surprise was he was going to fly it to Saba and 3rd surprise... he was originally going to pay some guy in China (the guy with the bad photocopy) $100,000 U.S. dollars for the same track! :wacko:

Anyway, here's a pic of the track at build stage and installed. Obviously delighted with the savings he had made he flew me and my wife business class and put us up in the Saba Shang Ri La Resort. My best install trip ever!

 

8CYjTgQ.jpg

Edited by axman
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I thought it was about time I thanked you for an awe inspiring thread.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the walk through your track building past; these tracks are jaw dropping, not only in design but also in build quality. A truly lost art, I only hope that someday soon we will see someone start to build track like this again. I know of a business here in Canberra who is looking for just such a track, so if anyone knows where one is, I will be only too happy to pass on the details.

 

Cheers

Andrew

A man without a woman is like a neck without a pain.

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Thanks Andrew. I must admit I hate having to build the same track twice. Not a good business decision I know but every time I build a different track I look forward to the excitement of driving something different. There are some tracks that inspire, and some that seem boring but that can be changed by the type of car raced. I remember years ago when I was building a monster track in S.A. for Len De Brenni I was surprised how much fun the locals were having on a really basic figure "8" track that he still had running while I was doing the build. They had something like an FJ Holden class or Speedway with 36D motors, I raced on a couple of club nights and realised how much fun the racing basic classes can be.

Hav'nt been to Canberra for a long time.. last time I was asked to come and "smooth out" (rebuild) the launch pads straights and banked turns at a place called "Electrotrax" raceway. Walked in and there was a vertical wall at the end of a very bumpy straight. Upon closer inspection the guy had used a jigsaw and cut right thru the... Masonite surface (true!) and then fixed battons underneath so it would'nt fall apart. Floppiest track i'ver ever seen. I somehow got it launch-less and to promote the place the track owner put on the Coca Cola $200 race. I felt a guilty when I won that race.. I mean I did have "local" track knowledge!

 

c68RfFP.jpg

Edited by axman
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Did the track have a metal fence at the banked corner? It was owned by a guy called Dave.

My brothers and I fitted that for him as when the cars came off at that end they would smash into the shop window.

If you raced there, we would have met back then as my brothers and I were regular race goers and between us held every lap record there was.

I would have only been about 14 at the time, so sorry not a really good memory of back then.

 

I do remember a pro am race and I won the am bit and got a brand new chassis for my efforts, and that night at the wind down party I was showing off my new chassis to all and any, when I noted that the roller bearings were a little tight, someone offered to lube them for me with their beer, and those bearings wouldn't run free ever again unless you lubed them with beer. Maybe that's why I like beer so much....

Edited by 32coupe

A man without a woman is like a neck without a pain.

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Dont know about the metal fence but I'm sure a few cars launched of that bank and hit the ceiling at the Coca Cola race.. so maybe the metal fence went on after. One good thing about the track though.. never had a problem with grubscrews in the bottom-less slots!

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Another track, this time was built to go in a long skinny shop in Beenleigh Queeensland. If you're ever tight for space the "double decker" concept works well. By slightly off-setting the donut it enables the bulk of the track to be pushed up hard against a wall but still give easy marshalling acess.. After Beenleigh closed this track for many years was the "2nd" track at Browns Plains. The main track is one of Garry J's awsome Blue King tracks with eliptical corners. Somewhere on the site there's a post that Browns Plains has just re-opened with new owners and a total refurb... be good to see photo's.

 

lNLW6Pi.jpg

Edited by axman
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Kim,

 

I have never seen or raced on most of these 'lost' tracks and cannot help to image how fantastic it would be to find a few of them - then put them up here in Brisbane and have a decent 'big' track centre for us to use.

 

.....I can dream, can't I?

 

Cheers,

 

Jan

'The older I get the faster I was.'

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