Contracted a slot car addiction...

So a few weeks ago I decided to dig out the old slot car set. Now this is something that we had growing up and I didn't think much to where it came from. My Dad got it from my Grandma who I am guessing was going to throw it away. I came to find out recently that it was originally my Aunt Nicole's slot car set. Makes sense now that I think about it. I set up a track and plugged in the controllers and the power supply. Put my sad collections of cars on the track and pulled the trigger..... nothing happened. I have fond memories of sanding the rails and using pencil erasers to clean the contacts on the cars just to get them to move. In this case that wasn't going to help. The cars has holes worn through their pick-up shoes. Back into the box it all went.

State of current cars:

1. Dump Truck (Mfg. TYCO) - 1 of 4 pickup shoes was broken off, 3 of 4 had holes worn through them. Tires had rotted and no longer provided traction. Axles need lint removal.
2. Big Rig (Mfg. TYCO) - 4 of 4 pickup shoes had holes worn through them. Tires had rotted providing no traction. Axles need lint removal.
3. Red, White and Blue 240z (Mfg. AMRAC) - Pickup shoes had groves/holes worn into them. Tires had rotted.

Due to the sad state of my cars I figured some tune-ups were in order, so off to various hobby stores I went. To my surprise I could find absolutely nothing to repair my cars. So I decided to look into some new cars.... The cheapest ones were $20 a pop. I wasn't ready to spend that much, so I left.

I was at Fry's Electronics a while back and stumbled across a slot-car set made by Life-Like. This set included a track, power supply, controllers, and two cars for $50 bucks. I didn't end up buying it because money was a little tight then, but on a later trip to Fry's I found the price was reduced to 39.90. So I picked up an entire working set for the cost of two replacement cars. That unfortunatly just made me want to get the old stuff working even more and may have kicked off my recent slot car kick...

To come - Fixing the old track and cars