Back in the earliest days of my slot car hobby, in January and February of 2020, when I was still trying out different formats for cars and tracks, I bought a fully “self contained” track made by LifeLike. I used it for a very short time on my basement floor where I took a video of it that I added to this early post before building Drag City Mk I, at which time I disassembled it and boxed it back up. Over a year and half later, I repurposed it for the first configuration of the “HO Highway” for The Road Crew, but found it was not a good fit for the old cars due to the track’s smooth surface, which made the already poor traction abilities of the original thin-tired cars even worse. So again I boxed it up and redid the HO Highway with Tyco track before buying my first vintage Model Motoring track, which I am still using for The Road Crew today.
LifeLike seems to have been a bit player in HO slot racing, and their focus-as far as I can tell-has been exclusively on NASCAR-themed cars, which is not my thing. The track seemed OK, with its slide-snap construction being similar to old-school Tyco Pro track, and it came with a cheap but functional lap counter and a pair of X-over pieces, although I never liked the way the controllers were hard-wired into the terminal track. As result, I went initially with Tyco and then later with Tomy AFX for my own tracks, all of which I have detailed extensively in many posts throughout this blog, and the LifeLike track was largely forgotten. So, why all the backstory? Because I finally figured out what to do with that odd-out track: I gave it away!
Yep, I gave it to my friend Shanon who set it up in his kitchen, along with a couple of my cars, to which I added a couple of new ones in addition to the one he bought. Now armed with 4 Thunderjets, I decided to go to his house to race; something I haven’t yet done! And not only did I bring some of my few completely stock Auto World Ultra G T-Jets with me when I went to see him, but I added a couple to my own collection as well!
Readers of this blog know that a stock Ultra G is a rare sight in my collection, but since Shanon is just getting into this adventure, I figured it was best to keep it simple to start with, so when we race together on either my track or what it is now his track, we race Ultra G’s in “out of the box” form: no traction magnet mods, no wheel or tire mods, no performance tuning; just unpackage, oil, drop on the track, and GO!
So my friend’s fleet now consists of 2 1950’s classics, a ’58 Plymouth done up as the “as found” “Christine” and a purple and flamed ’57 Chevy, and a pair of muscle cars from the latest Auto World release, a silver ’68 Firebird and a dark green ’70 Chevy Nova Yenko. As for my own additions, I couldn’t resist a couple of new releases myself, a bright red copy of the ’62 Chevy Bel-Air “bubbletop” and a copper ’64 GTO, as well as on out-of-production ePay purchase, a ’66 Nova in mist green. The red Bel-Air is exceptionally fast, but that means taking it easy in the corners, where the car’s size and weight work against it. As for the track, he is going to add a corkscrew with some home made bridge supports that he’s working on now, and who knows what else the future holds if he decides to expand and buy a few more pieces!
It’s been quite fun introducing a friend to this hobby, and though he’s unlikely to become the slot head that I am, it seems like a nice diversion for him and something fun for us to do when I drop by to see him. Even with their dull and identical stock wheels, racing these cars is a blast! What an awesome way to embrace the present while staying in touch with the past!
2 thoughts on “Keeping It Stock”