Configuring Downhill 1:64 Scale Diecast Hot Wheels Racing Course Chapter THREE Strengthening Track.

September  10, 2020
#402

Gentle reader,

This article is third in a continuing series about creating or configuring a downhill 1/64th scale race course for diecast cars.

Previous episodes are linked below:



And the INDEX to EVERY article I have written about small cars:


For the uninitiated, ADULTS, mostly men, around the world are enjoying not only collecting "Hot Wheels" cars, but also racing them. In fact, more of these wee cars are sold to adults than kids by a large factor. Sadly, kids today are much more interested in interfacing with a device with a screen than playing and imagining in the real world. I blame the parents.

There are TWO YouTube channels that dominate this new phenomenon. 3DBotmaker is the most watched and emulated channel with Shri Lanka's DRC being second.


In 2020, 3D with the help of 2D built two new courses which make the previous year's course pale by comparison. They use a combination of their own 3D printed track pieces as well as Hot Wheels track and Crash Racers track. Watch their races, the 2019 and older aren't nearly as interesting, to see the phenomenal job they have done of creating two very life-like diorama/race venues and their commentating and banter is the icing on the cake.

The DRC in Shri Lanka has created two courses with almost everything hand made. This years "Yard Racing" and the earlier DRC course are quite something as are the races. Due to people around the world speaking many languages and watching his races, he uses a computer voice to announce and comment on the races.

NOTE: "HW" means Hot Wheels and "CR" means Crash Racers tracks.
You are likely thinking, "What am I looking at here?" And you are right to wonder.
Crash Racers (the grey track above) and Hot Wheels track (below) are very flexible by design. In the former, it has to flex to be able to attach to the high banked curves that make up their figure-8  (and now oval) circuits.
Hot Wheels track has to endure extreme curvature in order to be used in loops and hills and all the other ways it can be manipulated to have fun.  These are classic HW track pieces that are two feet (24") long compared to the standard of one foot (12") of today. Plus, they have no holes in them.

In building a downhill race course (and uphill if running the Crash Racers or Hot Wheels K.I.T. electric powered cars) the track has to be stiffer and made to be fastened to the structure the builder creates to hold everything. One does not want to screw through the track pieces to hold them in place.

Hot Wheels created the standard dimensions for track design and joiners. Crash Racers and other companies have chosen to use the same "gauge" to connect their track pieces together.

The makers of Crash Racers could not have anticipated their figure-8 race kits being repurposed in the ways they have and are being done around the world by ADULTS.
These are "Super Jumbo" wooden craft sticks sold by Michael's and probably other craft stores.

They are actually wider than the spec. (below) and fit tightly into Crash Racers track. They are too wide to fit Hot Wheels track without distorting the track.
To connect Crash Racers track SECURELY, one needs something other than Hot Wheels track joiners. These craft sticks are as the old saying goes, "The cat's meow."

And yes, there are people who have created clever 3D printed joiners, but they are pricey. 
Above is a super jumbo stick (top) next to a standard jumbo craft stick. The latter can be found here:
Amazon.com: 8 Inch Jumbo Wooden Craft Sticks (50 Pack): Arts, Crafts & Sewing
What I have done is use a combination of jumbo and super jumbo with standard 3/4" wide craft sticks as joiners to put them all together.
I used a miter saw by taping a stack of sticks together and cutting them "en mass" so they are equal length. 
But I found later on, that using sturdy scissors to cut them singly will do the trick in a pinch.  
Below are the three types/sizes of sticks as well as the underside of a piece of CR track.

The images above show why I cut off the rounded ends since they would form weak spots at the joints.
Now, if you look at this image and the ones below, they should make sense to you.
I used wood glue to bond them together, using a weight on a piece of wood on the top of the track in the case of the CR track and spring clamps with the HW track to increase the glue's adhesion. Regular Elmer's type white glue will also work as well as wood glue.
The Super Jumbo pieces are used on the end(s) of the CR track with standard Jumbo pieces in between. 

I may redo these by cutting the 3/4" wide sticks so that there are no longer round ends and gaps between them for added strength. I have PLENTY of craft sticks to redo it.
As previously stated the Super Jumbo sticks are a bit too wide to fit the Hot Wheels track without distortion.

Carefully sanding the edges of them S-J sticks would narrow them enough to work as joiners and I may do that since the plastic HW joiners are quite flimsy by comparison. 

All I would have to do is trace around a HW (classic) joiner onto the super jumbo craft sticks and use an electric sander to make them the correct width. You can see those orange HW joiners above and below.
We are using classic Hot Wheels track to avoid the BLUE DOTS which are every foot in most race courses seen on YouTube. 
This image (above) shows the Jumbo craft sticks minus their round ends, in the top row, then the 3/4" wide pieces in place in the middle and one extra which covers the plastic joiner to complete the task. 
The image above shows the spring clamps I use to press the glued sticks together until the glue sets. The track piece at the bottom is completed.

The image below shows a 1969 Hot Wheels Sizzlers Start/Brake piece with attached Chicane or esses track.

I have determined that the second set which we purchased (and seems to have never been used) might be better used right after the start gate OR possibly as a starting gate. 

That way, the braking mechanism will not be needed to slow the cars before the chicane. Believe us, they HAVE to slow down or will go flying off the track.
Above is a design study I did to try and create a course with lots of track to run on, but with limited floor space.
They are all stacked in the photo, but in OPPOSITE position, with the orange sections that would be on top, with a second dual-lane curve (which we now have) attaching to CR track. 
Each CR section would be lower and lower with the final straight section (wooden joiners showing) ending somewhere to catch the speeding cars. 
Think of a funnel (or funnel cloud) design with the widest section at the top and getting narrower as it goes downward. 
Nancy found a bunch of Lincoln Logs at a thrift store which might be used in construction. 
They can be glued together and to the craft sticks beneath to CR and HW tracks. 
The track pieces could always be slid off the structure if needed. 
Here are all the Lincoln Logs we have at present. Whether we actually use them will be determined once we have come up with a final design.

Thank you SO much for taking the time to read our blog. Please take a moment to click the FOLLOW button, above and to the right, just below the end of the list of article dates.
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 Scott & Nancy
September 10, 2020
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Restoring a 1937 Zenith 8S154H 6B06 TUBE Console Farm Radio

September 2, 2020
#401

Gentle reader,

My brother-in-law, married to my baby sister, is from Upstate New York. His Grandparents lived on a farm up there all their lives. 
While today most people living in the United States take running water, electricity, landline telephones and even broadband Internet for granted, well into the 20th Century there were STILL millions of citizens who relied on a hand-pumped well for water, an outhouse to do their business and candles or oil lamps for light when the sun went down. 

Bob's grandparents and their children were one of the millions who knew no better than the way they lived like people had done so for hundreds of years.

Also, something people did without was television. Firstly because it was not invented and available (for the wealthy) until the early 1940's. Now we can watch what we want, when and where we want and on countless devices.

But long before all that, people relied on word-of-mouth and if they were available in their area, newspapers, for news of what was happening outside their small wold.

Some electronics companies, rather than ignore those non-city dwelling people, saw an opportunity to fill a niche. They took some of their radios and made them able to be operated with a battery. 

How did one charge that battery? Well, like a windmill was used to pump water out of the well and to provide power to run all kinds of tools, there were also wind-driven battery chargers for the farm's battery.

Now, you may be thinking, "Battery? Everything runs on batteries!" Not in the 1930's. Automobiles and trucks of all sizes used six-volt wet-cell batteries, similar to this one below.
Called "wet cell" because inside is either hydrochloric acid wetting lead plates to provide the power. Some larger wet-cell batteries use and alkaline solution instead. BOTH will burn you if not careful.  
Nowadays, and since the 1970's, cars and trucks use twelve-volt (or sometimes multiples of 12) batteries to start their engines.
Thanks to TubeRadioLand.com for finding this ad and displaying it on your site.
$89.95 in 1937 dollars is equivalent to $1,652.92 today. A LOT of money for a radio!

The ads above and two images below are from this website: Zenith Model 8-S-154H (8S154H) Console Radio with Rare Maple Finish (1937)
This is the same radio as Bob's grandparents had on their farm. It is in far better condition than one that lived in a farmhouse heated by firewood.

We did not take "before" photos because we began cleaning out the DECADES of dust and cobwebs the radio had accumulated during it's eighty-three year lifetime.  
The speaker had been removed and the wires were cut prior to Bob giving it to us. As we were carrying it across their family room, one of the tubes fell out. Fortunately they have thick soft carpeting and the tube's "chimney" protected it. More on that later.
That dust gets everywhere is true, even UNDER the radio's chassis.
I did not know when plywood was invented, but it sure existed in 1937 because some of the structure is made of it. 
I know what speaker transformers were for, they used DC voltage to carry the sound long distances in large building PA systems for instance. 
But this radio uses one which the other one (shown above) does not. The speaker is twelve inches in diameter. What would be considered a large "woofer" these days, it was a full-range "High Fidelity" speaker almost 100 years ago. 
As you can see, we cleaned off dust and grime where we could reach it while the radio was in one piece. Cover was off the transformer housing too. But it came with the radio to us. 
The thick red and black wires coming out of it are to hook to the battery which sat on the floor of the radio beneath the speaker. 
Four of the six vacuum tubes have metal "chimneys" around them. It seems counterintuitive to me but they must have been designed to help funnel the tube's heat upward.
Inside the steel box (above and below) are two transformers (rectangular objects with round sections) and two capacitors. 

The larger transformer changes the six volt DC power to a MUCH higher power to run the tubes which require HUNDREDS of volts to work. Induction is the magic of transformers that makes that happen.  
The tube which fell out is the one on the right, above. The finned device between the square metal objects is the tuner. The "combs" rotate between other fixed fins to tune in certain frequencies. In the case of this radio MANY frequencies.
The tuning dial with four switches surrounding it. A photo down below shows a better look at the dial (after cleaning) which shows how many different types of radio this was capable of receiving.
The four shafts with white/black dials are for various functions, lower left one is the on/off and volume control switch. 
I carefully removed each tube and the wire that connects to the terminal that is atop the four tubes with chimneys. I carefully cleaned them and all the components I could get to while also carefully trying not to break or damage any wiring.

Well into the 1970's at least, there were TUBE TESTER machines in MANY stores in the US and around the world. I remember going with my Dad with a bag of tubes to the local Rexall Drugs store and helping him use the machine to see which tube(s) might be bad.
Transistors, and now integrated circuits, will never have the visual appeal of tubes.
While I have worked on and with electronics since the 1970's, as an amateur and professionally,  I have never worked on anything with tubes. So, this is a cosmetic restoration of this radio.
Those square metal covers house I know not what beneath. One of the many reasons I am not attempting to get this radio working. 
Old tube equipment is very liable to spark and possibly start burning if one simply plugs it in (or in this case hook up a six-volt battery to it) and then turns it on to see what will happen.

Below is the underside of the radio's chassis. 
For example, the large red and black wires the other end of which have battery cable clamps on them, are missing insulation right where they enter the chassis, above. 

The large metal wheel is a flywheel that is attached to the main shaft below the tuning dial. The AD refers to the radio's "Lightning Station Finder" and that is the flywheel. The fabric belt and strings that once wound around it and made the tuner and tuning dial rotate, were of course broken, so I removed the pieces.

For safety's sake, I cut off the 83 year old red and black wires and threw them away. I also removed the pieces from the clamp (above) so that none of our kids might get hurt after we are gone. 
Much less dust and dirt inside now.
Fortunately, whomever cut the speaker wires did them individually and at separate places so that matching them up by color and soldering them together much easier.
Transformer cover back on, I had to find the appropriate screws to secure it, and everything as clean as I could safely get it. Nice shiny tubes once again.
"A" is for antenna and a piece of wire was still hanging on to the screw terminal.
Speaker's five-pin plug is back in place on the radio chassis.
A shame the chimneys block the view of the tubes.
I suspect the yellow ring of plywood covers a hole big enough to hold a fifteen inch woofer. Possibly used in larger model console radios.
The following images show the radio laying flat so that I could (after considerable further cleaning of the wood) apply lemon oil to all wooden surfaces to restore life to the ancient wood.
Nice and shiny once again.

Nicks, chips and scratches do not bother us, it shows the long life the radio endured in the wilds of upstate New York.
If you look at the rear of the bottom of the radio, you can see it was wet many times. In fact, some pieces were crumbling off as I added feet to the back corners.
These are what I used to safely finish cleaning and restoring the wood. The GRIME we removed from it!
Each of the knobs are wooden and have Zenith's lightning bolt stylized "Z" on them.
If you click on any photo (or enlarge them with your fingers on a portable device) the photo will open over this page much larger. Then you will be able to see all the fascinating information the dial holds.
I made this image black and white to make it look more era-correct. While it would be awesome to have the radio working, the only frequencies it would still be able to receive are AM radio. All the other ones which people might listen to are now using much more modern (and thus unable to be received by this) and higher frequencies, if not in fact via satellite radio.

I have bought "retro" radios as well as other tube radios over the years. And written about them as well.
The black metal one above and below was Nancy's fathers and it still worked when we inherited it.

The wooden one on the top shelf, below, is also tube and it did work when I bought it and later sold it. 

Above is a retro floor radio I was delighted to find. It is large but much smaller (and lighter than) the Zenith. I wrote about it here: The Robb Collections: I found a floor radio. What's a floor radio? They Were Called Console Radios Once. Take a look.
This 1960's Zenith radio is also tube, but all I could get out of it was a buzzing sound. 
Older articles I wrote about our radio collection are listed below in order of writing.
The last article deals with a modification to the floor radio which greatly improved it's sound.

Thank you SO much for taking the time to read this article. Hopefully you learned somethings as well.

Please take a moment to click FOLLOW above which is below the long list of article dates and leave a comment below or on Facebook.

Scott & Nancy
September 2, 2020
#401
 




 
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