Bunker Project Log

14 Sep

The X-Mods Debacle

So, right about the time that I became pregnant with child #2, I went totally friggin nuts. Before then, I had a DVD habit, and the obvious video game habit, but… never anything like this:

american

and this:

truckin

and this:

tunerfish

and… this:

somebody's baby

(The sad thing is… that ain’t all of them.)

Anyway… for some odd reason, my fear of being a daddy again translated into buying crap.?A lot of crap. A lot of weird crap.

For a while there,?all I could do was think about X-Mods cars, all I would talk about was X-Mods cars. I went online and?made strategies for acquiring every X-Mod model that ever existed (which I kind of did, actually.)

I?even had?my pals hit up Radio Shack for returns.?Basically, if you bought a car and broke it, it would get returned to the store, where it would sit on the shelf for 5 or 6 months before it got dumped in the trash. We would go in or call and ask if they had any broken X-Mods they would sell for cheap. The Paladin was the master. He managed to snag about 15?broken cars for me (after skimming off?his picks, of course.)?Often we found that the cars were perfectly fine, and if not, they just needed minor repairs. I was pretty happy getting broken ones, because fixing them felt good, and if not, it became more parts to fix others.

?So… in the ultimate act of nerditude, I ended up turning my garage into an X-Mods track. Here’s how it turned out:

IMG_0633

The light grey surface is the garage floor. It is very slick. The dark grey is a bunch of Marcy Puzzle Mats from Walmart. This stuff is perfect, and relatively cheap. The outer edge of the track is 1/2″ PVC piping wrapped in insulating pipe wrap. The ramp is a?plastic artists portfolio hacked up?taped on the the track. The chevrons are made from yellow electrical tape.?

IMG_0632

The cars would drop in from the top, slide around the middle median, then would get back up the ramp. If you missed the ramp, you would have to reverse and try again.?

Here’s a YouTube video of the early track:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsZa1py-Ug8]

The goal was to have 12 cars racing during Bunker Parties, and it almost worked.

The thing about X-Mods, is that they have modifiable parts, and 12 different possible frequencies, which meant that you could race 12 at a time.

The problem is, the frequencies are very close together, and they still bleed.

So, when I had everyone gathered together, and we were standing there with our controllers, the cars would start, and make it halfway down the track, but as soon as they hit the far left corner, only one would continue to work. Since we were all standing in a line, all the controllers were jamming each other.

That was a lot of time and money down the drain.

Anyone want to buy some X-Mods cars?

4 Responses to “The X-Mods Debacle”

  1. 1
    Stub Daddy Says:

    Hey, It was a great waste of $40 and you were a great salesman. I even bought two of these stopid things.

  2. 2
    natx Says:

    I was able to resist this urge. But, as predicted, this was a failure

  3. 3
    Gangrene Says:

    Ah NatX… so quick with the I told you so. You will get your comeuppance. Some day… when you least expect it… comeuppance.

  4. 4
    natx Says:

    Well, you did get me all the Star Wars pocket models 😉

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