In some ways, this almost feels like it felt in the very beginning, back on that cold day in early January 2020 when I set up my childhood Tyco set for the first time in 36 years and got bit hard by the slot car bug. I’ve just finished setting up a small track on the table in my toy room where it all started. This is the lone LifeLike track that I bought back in early 2020 when I was still trying to decide what platform for track and cars that I liked best. This set was briefly on my basement floor for a couple of months-maybe less-and was then boxed up, not to see the light of day again until now. It’s not a great set, in all honesty-it fits together like the old Tyco Pro track of the ‘70s-but it’s a nice self-contained no-frills package that I thought would work out well for this specific purpose: setting up a HO scale track for the original Aurora T-jets that I have brought into service and am now racing for the first time!
Note that I use the word “racing” loosely: there’s no real competition here, as these cars are entirely too slow and clumsy to race, but they are a lot of fun to drive, since the challenge is in just keeping them going! The lack of traction of these things is amazing; I figure its probably much worse now than it was back in the day since the original tires are all dried out and hard, which is why I have just ordered a set of “Jel Claws” tires which will hopefully be here soon. I’ve heard a lot of bad things about them from various posts on Hobby Talk, but those same people trash-talking Jel Claws were recommending some obscure brands of tires I couldn’t even find, and, hey, they were cheap, so I’ll give them a try; they can’t be worse than what I’m running with now!
A quick look at the players will reveal a motley crew of body types and styles: domestic and foreign, luxo-barges, sports cars, and full blown racers from Aurora Model Motoring, Dash Motorsports, and MEV. A couple of these cars-like the blue ’69 Roadrunner and the black/gold ’70 Chevelle-were in the racing fleet, only to be retired once I found they were all a wee bit too small in scale to look right with the rest of the cars and the diorama around the track. Note that the maroon ’62 Pontiac Catalina I mentioned in my third installment of “The Replacements” is also here, along with its MEV sisters, the ’58 Eldorado and the ’61 Bel-Air. And you can bank on this: more MEV bodies are in the future!
I honestly don’t know what the future holds for this format; I know that there is NOT going to be an expansive diorama because I don’t have enough HO scale cars to create scenery; all my die-casts are 1:64(ish), so this is probably just a temporary installation for me to enjoy these old T-jets before I get bored with them and migrate back to my “big track” where the ultra fast Ultra G’s race! But I don’t have to have a plan: whether I’m at the controls of the fast Aston Martin, the flashy Ferrari Dino, the torquey Mustang Mach 1, or the roomy Country Squire wagon, I’m just enjoying the ride, cruising down the highway and playin’ the radio, with no particular place to go! What a wonderful remembrance of things past!
This is awesome! I think that it’s important to have a set up like this where there isn’t concern about a diorama and the rest, just a place to run some of the these other cars, let them do their thing, and have fun doing it. I would try that brand of tires and see how they do. Like you said, it couldn’t hurt! I’ve had that experience too where people recommend things that I can’t find anywhere.