HO Tech Tips > Gravity Timer Starting Gate

Here's a project that will boggle your mind:  Before I found Daniel Groulx at Trakmate, I was trying to find a way to do a Christmas Tree type starting light sequence.

I came up with this wild gravity timer system you see here.  Prior to this, we had track condition lights of red, yellow and green, tied into a solenoid activated starting gate built into the track. The starting gate itself was built of brass components, and required sectioning a straight section of plastic track.  We used push buttons to activate the starting gate, and micro-switches operated the track condition lights.  The green lights were on a toggle switch to flip to to yellow track lights during crashes.  The red lights lit up brightly to warn racers that the gate was closed, but many ignored the lights AND the verbal warnings, and some hit the brass gate with violent force. Some lost shoes and pins, others lost chassis's to large splits down the center!

Anyhow, I actually built this crazy gizmo you see below, and it did function for some time.  Dust and crashes led to the retirement of the "Flintstone-like" mechanism.  Dust on the small rails broke the connection from the steel marbles, causing the lights to flicker or not light at all, and there were starting gate problems;
> When a race was started, all racers were SUPPOSED TO WAIT for the GREEN light before hitting the throttle.  Well, everyone just floored it against the starting gate, and would TAKE OFF when the gate opened.  Only problem was-, Cars with stronger magnets, and due to the improved downforce of the new Tomy Super G+ cars released in late 1991, we found that four of these cars pushing against the starting gate was too much for the electro-magnetic solenoid to open the gate, and everyone would have to let off.  This of course led to all kinds of false starts and arguements.(Well...kind of)  Then, the solenoid itself finally melted down in a puff of smoke and melted plastic...

Thank God we finally found Trakmate!!

The Electro-Starting Gate was cool while it lasted, and will be in the memory of many past racers at Vargo Speedway.  The old timing tower still stands next to the new inspection building, and the flag man tower still gets used by the flag man. :-) The lights were bashed out years ago.

The building that housed the gravity timer.

Roll the steel ball down the pitch of the roof-

It dropped down the hole-

Then the ball travelled down the timing rack and lit the starting lights.

When it got to the bottom, it triggered the solenoid the open the brass gate, and then the ball rolled into a collection area.

The solenoid was hidden under the flag/starting tower.  The lights didn't last long after continous crashes into the tower-

A pic of the remaining parts of the starting gate assy.

Here you can see where the solenoid eventually melted from the overload conditions and continous use!

The brass gate components that were spliced into the track.

©Vargo Speedway 1999-2001

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