Cool New Nascar Diecasts

Some of you may know I've recently been picking up some Nascar stock cars etc...  Well in my latest batch I got a bunch of 'Roaring Racers' from Racing Champions.  These are old, I mean sort of pre-millenium manufacture so I need to let them free from their packaging so I can change the batteries (2 x LR44), here's a short video of two I already replaced the cells on.  One was perfectly clean inside, the other had one cell that had leaked a bit, but its amazing what you can do with a bit of tin foil

Enjoy!

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Wait...these are old? Hasn't Tomica come out with something similar?

Yes true, the heading is a bit misleading, they are old, very old, but new to me and sound far better than youtube implies

I opened one up, actually by mistake as I thought the batteries were inside as I didn't notice the little cover with its own screw.  It turns out the sound thing is actually quite sophisticated bearing in mind the age.  You have a round speaker with a diameter almost as big as the car roof, a small circuit board connected to the front left wheel which acts as a switch and of course the ability to user change the batteries.

I'm not sure about the Tomica ones and how they compare, maybe someone has some to show?  Or should that be 'Play' as its sound?

These however are in my opinion quite cool, especially at the price I got them   The other nice thing is they are also very free rolling just like a Hot Wheels, so you could set the sound off before sending them hurtling down a race track lol!!

Here's some shots of the insides of one of these cars, you can probably tell the age of these by the real transistor, resistors and capacitor rather than surface mount components and the over the top guage of wire

Just for info, here's the ones I got in the job lot, to be fair the standard of the finish is not as good as the other nascar's I have, but these are primarily about the sound function...

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Holy Smokes, Did you get all those at one Walmart's Clearance aisle? I do like the branding especially the last one with McDonalds.

Where does the battery fit?

We don't have Walmart in the UK mate (more's the pity), I got those in a job lot off eBay US and shipped them over.  Paid way less than you'd think as well

The ones I really like at the moment are the 1/144th scale Nascar models you can get, these are around 'N' gauge size or Plarail Advance (if you remember them).  To put them in perspective the cars are no more than an inch in length but the detail is awesome.  I'll add a couple of pics below...

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Cute little buggers aren't they

I love them, you can have a big collection in the same space as a few hot wheels normally take up lol

Best part is they are still diecast metal and have free wheeling wheels like their bigger brothers.  I guess what I need to do is get some of the micro hot wheels track for them

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Thats the spirit...room for more stuff valuables