About: WoodAirGrille.com is part of the GBS family of Companies. Gunter Building Solutions; LLC; or GBS; was founded in 2007 by Rod Gunter. Despite being a second generation specialist in kitchen cab…

Two Christmases ago the three kids in the family (my son, my

daughter and me) all got good quality off road radio control cars. By good quality, I mean RC cars that were ordered complete from a retailer that specializes in RC cars, can be repaired with readily available parts if something breaks, and are capable of better speed and performance than the RC cars your typically find at the local toy store or department store. It seems necessary to explain my definition because there are a number of RC car enthusiasts who are quite passionate about building and racing some extremely impressive vehicles. I have nothing but respect and admiration for those people, however, I am just a dad having some fun with my kids and though I would share an idea.

We had played around with raking leaves out of the way in the wood behind the house to form a track and with setting up obstacles in the yard to drive around and had fun with all of that. I decided that it would be worthwhile to come up with a track system with the following specifications:

1. It needed to be able to be set up in our yard and removed at the end of the day or at least in time for me to cut the grass.

2. I wanted it to be portable to take to a friend’s house or grandma’s house and be set up there.

3. It needed to be fun to set up, take down and play with.

4. I needed it to fit on the shelf in our store room that the RC cars were on which restricted me to 33” width, 8” height and 21” depth. About the equivalent to an average suitcase.

5. It needed to be light so it could easily be moved.

6. The track had to stay in place so it would not become a mess every time someone missed a turn.

The kids have had a blast with this system and it was pretty cheap to build. The main ingredients are pipe insulation sleeves, a roll of high visibility duct tape and a box of nails. I had most of the lumber lying around, but it was all common cheap lumber.

There are really 2 projects here. One is the track system. The other is the wood storage box that doubles as a ramp. The box could easily be replaced with a plastic storage container and the lid could probably be used as the ramp. The dimensions of the box and track pieces are built to fit on a specific shelf in my house and could vary to suit your own needs. Here is how I did it.