Scalextric shocker...
Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 1:30 am
I was a huge Scalextric fan before I got to CH, and was delighted to find a four-lane Scalextric set when I arrived in LHA. It was great to race the set's Panther and Europa Vee grand prix cars, but after a while they felt a little slow and pedestrian. Consequently it wasn't too long before we started building our own, much faster, slot cars to race on the track. I remember assembling 1/32nd Riko slot car kits, often with excellent results. Three other cars I remember from this period were a 1/24th Ford Popular, painted in metallic blue, a 1/24th Renault Caravelle (owned by Mark Whitaker I believe), and my own very fast but difficult to handle 1/32nd AMT Studebaker Avanti. I also recall many hours of tinkering and making fine adjustments to Scalextric cars, and therein lies a shocking tale...
I believe it was the summer of 1971. I had just made some fine adjustment to one of my Scalextric cars and decided to run a quick test on it in LHA's hobbies room. I plugged in the Scalextric mains transformer, connected the hand throttle to the transformer and the track, and then tried the car. Nothing. Not a bloomin' bleep.
Irritated I yanked the mains plug out of the socket, without turning the socket off. However in my haste I had forgotten that a few weeks before I had had to change the plug's fuse. Unfortunately I had mislaid the large screw from the mains plug, and had simply sellotaped the cover onto the plug. Now, as I yanked the plug out, suddenly the plug's cover came off in my hand. One of my fingers strayed into the live plug and I touched the fuse.
Within nano seconds I shot about 20ft across LHA's hobbies room and slammed into a wooden cupboard door. My whole body was shaking and, quite understandably, I burst into tears. I was still shaking an hour later, and It was many weeks before I went back to tinkering with my Scalextric cars...
To this day, that incident in LHA's hobbies room remains the biggest electric shock I have ever had. Not to be recommended.
Any other Scalextric memories?
I believe it was the summer of 1971. I had just made some fine adjustment to one of my Scalextric cars and decided to run a quick test on it in LHA's hobbies room. I plugged in the Scalextric mains transformer, connected the hand throttle to the transformer and the track, and then tried the car. Nothing. Not a bloomin' bleep.
Irritated I yanked the mains plug out of the socket, without turning the socket off. However in my haste I had forgotten that a few weeks before I had had to change the plug's fuse. Unfortunately I had mislaid the large screw from the mains plug, and had simply sellotaped the cover onto the plug. Now, as I yanked the plug out, suddenly the plug's cover came off in my hand. One of my fingers strayed into the live plug and I touched the fuse.
Within nano seconds I shot about 20ft across LHA's hobbies room and slammed into a wooden cupboard door. My whole body was shaking and, quite understandably, I burst into tears. I was still shaking an hour later, and It was many weeks before I went back to tinkering with my Scalextric cars...
To this day, that incident in LHA's hobbies room remains the biggest electric shock I have ever had. Not to be recommended.
Any other Scalextric memories?