This article was published with special permission from RC Car Action.

Do it on the cheap or do it with some bucks.
THE GREAT THING about minis and micros is that you can run them just about anywhere, but for many racers, running without boundaries gets old pretty quickly. There’s the local track, but there, you’ll subject your precious ride to an attack by lumbering bigger cars. The solution? Make your own track. Fortunately, you don’t need a lot of space or a lot of money to make a challenging track that will keep you and your buddies entertained for hours. Let’s look at track ideas at different price points.

If you’re at all like us, you probably have track designs scribbled in the margins of your class or meeting notes. That’s good for getting ideas down quickly, but you should draw your final designs on graph paper before you lay it out in three dimensions. The design lines will give you a sense of scale and dimensions before you start and may even help you to plan how much you’ll need to spend on materials to get the job done. And be sure to keep your designs in a notebook or a binder for future reference.

COST: NOTHING

If you have access to a backyard, you probably have access to yard tools and gardening equipment, which are perfect for making a temporary track. For off-road minis, dirt works best, but short grass is OK, too. For on-road, any driveway will do; just look out for cracks in the asphalt. On second thought, let some of the cracks dictate the track’s design. If you need to secure items on a roadcourse, a roll of duct tape can be really handy, and then use the roll itself as a corner marker. The size of your track is limited only by the available area and how much "track stuff" you can round up. Dig around and you’ll find plenty of things to use; here are some examples:

FOR JUMPS: Cardboard boxes cut at an angle Plywood scraps FOR TRACK BARRIERS OR LANES: Garden hose Wood scraps such as 2x4s Broom handles Rakes (the flat kind, please) Hockey sticks FOR CORNER MARKERS: Plastic plates Plastic lids Coffee cans Old CDs

USE GEOGRAPHY TO YOUR ADVANTAGE.  Potholes, roots, cracks in the driveway. These can all be pretty serious obstacles for little cars, so why not use them to your advantage. Instead of just going around a pothole or tree root, why not put a jump in front if it and leap over it. As for suspension-breaking driveway cracks, run hosepipe along the cracks and make it an inner track border.

COST: $5 to $15

If you’ve ever played fieldsports, you’ve probably seen the paint they use to mark field lines with. This stuff comes in a few colors and is available at most sporting goods stores. It’s water-based, so it won’t harm grass, but it can’t be washed away that easily either, so be sure to get permission before you paint the backyard. Obviously, it doesn’t work well on loose dirt, but it does work surprisingly well on hardpacked dirt. And you probably wouldn’t want to use it on the driveway because it’s a pain to clean off asphalt (ask me how I know this). A 50-foot roll of duct tape will also allow you to mark lanes and make a challenging roadcourse.

PVC pipe is the classic material for temporary on-road and off-road tracks. And we’re dealing with minis, so you can get away with cheap 1/2-inch pipe. On a recent trip to the local hardware store, I found 10-foot sections of 1/2-inch PVC pipe for $1.29 and an assortment of 45- and 90-degree joints, T-fittings and straight couplers for 22 to 67 cents each; $25 will get you plenty of materials for a 10x20-foot track. If you make an on-road course, you’ll need a roll of duct tape to secure the pipe. To secure the pipe in dirt, use long nails or a 90-degree coupler and an inch or two of PVC pipe buried in the dirt. For a couple of dollars more, you can pick up a mini hacksaw to cut the pipe with, and if you want to get really fancy, you’ll find a ratcheting PVC pipe cutter at a local discount tool store, and that will make things much easier. With a handful of joints and fittings, you can make complicated layouts. And if you make a course that you want to use again, just label the adjoining ends of the pieces with a permanent marker so you’ll know where they go.

If you have a Kyosho Mini-Z or a RadioShack XMOD car and have money to spend, you’d like the RCP Track System that’s available from Kyosho America and RadioShack. The foam pieces that make up the sets are much like puzzle-piece play-mats for kids but without the garish colors. The sets feature 1.25-inch-high side rails made of a soft, forgiving material that has differing textures on both sides—a slick side and a “racing surface.” At $80, the cheapest set gives you a 10x5-foot oval, and the larger, more complicated tracks cost up to $300. They’re modular, so you can start with a basic track set and buy more pieces or entire track systems when you’re able to. The available “Jump Kit” is perfect for Losi Micro-Ts and Kyosho Mini-Z Monsters.

SOURCES
Kyosho Corp. of America
RadioShack
RCP Tracks