Is buying slot cars addictive? You betcha! I can’t stop doing it, and even lately I’ve been buying cars that I have no idea what I’m even going to do with! I’ve found a lot of bargains online lately, and a lot of the new Auto World releases are pretty good looking in spite the noticeable quality decline I’ve complained about.
Well, it looks like it’s not just addictive for me: one of my friends seems to have caught the bug as well! I’ve done a few posts about this, 2 of them called “Keeping It Stock”, explaining how my friend Shanon and I have been racing together over the last few months since I gave him my unused LifeLike track to set up at his house. Since he’s a n00b, the 2 of us are racing exclusively stock cars because he hasn’t gotten into the process of disassembly and maintenance, customizing, and performance turning, and we’ve decided to keep it that way. What I didn’t expect was that he would get as “into it” as he has; he’s now starting to act a little like me when I was getting into the hobby in January of 2020, and over the last week he’s bought over 8 new cars and is suddenly building a fleet of his own!
Of course because my primary joy is in building and customizing the cars, so few of my cars are still stock that in order to race against him I’ve had no choice but to start buying more cars of my own! Oh, darn! 😀 So what we have here is the impromptu beginning of a new fleet! I think its time we make it “official” and give it name! I have the Muscle Car Racing Fleet, The [Numbered] Sports Car Racing Fleet, The Trans Am Racing Fleet, and The Road Crew (the old non-magnet Aurora Thunderjet 500 cars). Now, quite accidentally, we have the beginning of The Super Stock Fleet!
The cars are all Auto World Ultra G Thunderjets without exception, and all are brand new out of package, even if Shanon has opted to pony up for some out of production models he’s found on Amazon. No custom wheels here: no replacement field magnets, traction magnet modifications, aftermarket guide pins, or high performance brushes; the only thing we’ve agreed to allow is tire changes for looks only, such as trading out plain blackwalls for redlines, whitelines, or RWLs where they are available, but they all have to be original and stock Auto World tires. A car that comes out of the package with the older style plastic guide pin can keep it, but most of the cars run with the new metal combo screw/guide pin. This way they are about as similar as they can be, though as I have discussed at length in one of my favorite posts, there is still plenty variance in performance to keep things interesting!
So the fun with this fleet is not in the building, the customizing, and the tuning; yes, that’s what I love best, but what’s fun about this is the social aspect of having someone else to race against and honing my skills, and watching my friend hone his. He is getting better, although he is still easily thrown by the unexpected, such as a particular car with an abnormally strong traction magnet. He’s learning though. And as I’ve said, these stockers are challenging! My T/A fleet is all stock as well so I do have experience with this, but since most of my cars run with sticky low profile aftermarket tires, deeper guide pins, and many have upgraded magnets, I’m sometimes thrown myself by the amount of skill it takes to keep these upright and in the slot!
Racing on the small LifeLike track I gave him and racing on my large Tomy AFX are very different, and some cars are going to do better on one or the other; a few seem to do well on both, but since no customizing is allowed, we run what we brung and make the best of it, and there’s some excitement in that too, to be frank! We’re getting together to race around once a week and even as fall comes on and I get busier at work (since in my industry the last quarter of the year is crunch time), we’ll probably just keep that up! I’ll keep racing on my own with my fleets of customized dream machines or with the old-skool road crew, but there’ll be time for the social aspect of The Super Stock Fleet as well!
And hey, look at this: I get to buy more cars! And what’s our slogan here at thunderjetheaven.com?
This is awesome and he has aquired some nice pieces! I can see how this can become quiet addictive and the racing takes real skill to develop as it’s harder than it looks!