Restoring more Scalextric cars (Jaguar XJR-9, Rover SD1, Porsche 911)

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I’ve recently been stockpiling old Scalextric cars to restore, and I thought I’d make a post restoring some of the simpler ones.

Today we have a lovely Castrol liveried XJR-9.

The Patrick Motor Sport SD1 is the car I’m restoring today as my Dad has the Triplex car.

The Triplex car was just going to be a parts car, but I actually have some plans for it. It’s a little bit more involved though, so it will get its own dedicated post.

Finally a little 911. I really liked the green and gold.

We’ll start with the XJR-9

This was sold as a non runner.

It’s simply missing the little white pinion gear on the end of the motor.

These little pinion gears are made out of quite a soft plastic and are prone to cracking, or breaking apart as this one had.

If the motor spins and the wheels don’t turn, or if the mechanism binds up at certain points, then chances are it’s going to be a problem with the pinion gear.

Pendle Slot Racing sell packs of them here: https://www.pendleslotracing.co.uk/scalextric-inline-pinion-9-tooth.html

You can also get brass pinion gears which are obviously a lot stronger. They are more common on more competition focused slot cars from manufacturers such as Slot It or NSR.

In my opinion, Scalextric Johnson and Mabuchi type motors don’t really produce enough power to warrant spending the extra money, so for these restorations I just use the regular plastic gears.

Normally the easiest way of fitting these is to push them onto the shaft with the motor out of the car. The motor in this Jag was really tightly fitted though, and I didn’t want to snap anything trying to pry the motor out, so I opted to take the back axle out and fit it with the motor in situ.

Once it’s in just turn the motor for a few rotations to make sure everything is nice and free.

Aside from that, I fitted a set of 3d printed mirrors from eBay and treated it to new tyres.

Whenever you buy an old slot car it’s always worth buying a set of rear tyres for it. As they age they get hard and lose their grip. They’re a lot slower and harder to drive if they can’t grip the track.

Next up is the Rover SD1.

The biggest issue with the SD1 is the windows. Both had really discoloured, manky windows.

The plan was to use the windows from the Triplex car in the Patrick Motor Sport car. When I took the windows out of the cars though, the one in the Triplex car looked like it had been on fire!

We’ll clean up the original windows then!

I started by simply cleaning them with warm water. I then tried the old wives trick of scrubbing the yellowed plastic with toothpaste, inside and out. This yielding some success, but I also used my Autoglym headlight restorer and some 4000 grit sandpaper to take away the discolouration.

It’s not perfect, but it’s better.

I also cleaned the body as it was kinda mouldy and disgusting haha!

Finally I added some different wheels I also got from Pendle Slot Racing. Just to finish it off!

Mechanically this one was in good order. I do service the cars by putting a tiny drop of 3 in 1 oil on the gears and spraying a little bit of this Electrical Contact Cleaner WD40 into the motor and running it on a 9V battery for about 30 seconds. These motors respond really well to the WD40!

Finally – the Porsche!

I started by soaking the body in warm water to soften the old water slide transfers that a previous owner had covered the car in. After they had been soaked they simply broke apart my a bit of persuasion from my finger nail.

I also cleaned the windows as I had done with the SD1

This one also had a cracked pinion gear and desperately needed a new set of tyres, which I’ve also covered above.

This car also came with headlights and one of the bulbs was out (you can buy them in pairs from eBay, so I replaced the pair).

I’ve never seen another slot car with this weird set up for headlights before.

One of the posts that holds the copper sheet bit in place was broken on this car, so the whole thing fell apart as soon as I took the body off.

This is how I’ve set it back up and it seems to work. Hopefully someone can use this as a reference if theirs falls apart too haha!

The finished product!

Although all three of these were simple restorations, I’m really pleased with how they turned out!

The Castrol Jaguar XJR-9 has been on the list of cars I’d like to own for a while now, so it’s nice to finally have one in the collection. I think the blue and yellow wheels finish the Rover off nicely and the Porsche is just a lovely little thing.