Those 90s CART cars had the most incredible sound, captured and archived perfectly by the DCS sound on the game!

I recall they had to put restrictors on those cars at TMS, because the speeds were so fast the drivers were pulling too many G’s and getting tunnel vision.

Friend of mine isn't a pinball guy but has never missed a 500, pretty much ever as far as I know. Came by and the first time he played and heard those sounds, as well as the callouts, just awesome to watch the look on his face.

There were no restrictors on the cars. if I remember correctly they were pulling almost 4 g's over 80% of the lap. That ended up causing the drivers to experience the early stages of a grey out. They ended up cancelling the race.

The restrictor you may have been thinking of was an aerodynamic device put on the wing to cause excess drag. The byproduct of that was that it created a huge draft and ended up letting the trailing car just scream be the leading car. Those draft battles were pretty fun to watch.

Thanks for the clarification. I just remember them saying it was unsafe to race at the speeds they were achieving on the track. I remember thinking, why don’t they just control their speed, but I guess that’s not how a racer thinks in the heat of competition.

Race day with no race. Strange times, strange times.
One of my favorite parts of the race was the beginning when Jim Nabors sang "Back Home Again in Indiana".
In memoriam

One of my good pinball buddies from LA has been to a couple 500's with me. We had a freakin blast. Pinball-is-great remember this?
YOUNGGG GIRL....GET OUTTA MY MIND...
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Indy Racing League raced at TMS, Champ Car cancelled I believe due to driver vertigo or something like that. In IRL, we were doing around 220mph, I think the champ cars were a bit faster.

You are right. After doing some reading, in 2001 there was a 600 mile CART race scheduled at TMS. TMS has banks of 24 degrees (only 8 degrees at the lower levels) vs. 9 degrees at IMS. As a side note, I've actually been able to ride my bike around the track on two different occasions during cycling rallies, and all I can say is wow! Anyway, they did some testing and achieved an avg. lap speed 225 mph, so they decided to proceed. Then, during practice on the first day, all the top cars were averaging track speeds above 230 mph with the top car at 233.8 MPH. To make matters worse, on the second day all of the top cars were above 235 mph with the leader at 236.7 mph. They moved on to qualifying with the 17 top speeds above 230 mph.

After qualifying the drivers were complaining about lack of peripheral vision, poor reaction time, disorientation, and vertigo symptoms. CART determined they needed to lower the speeds to under 225 mph to be safe enough to race. They made some efforts to adjust the cars, but just couldn't figure out a way to make it happen in such a short time. The race was cancelled, lawsuits ensued, and CART declared bankruptcy in 2003 then sold to Champ Car which was eventually rolled into IRL.

Watched the 2014 race on ESPN2 last night. Good friend of mine is pretty friendly with Ryan Hunter Reay, going back to his rookie days. When he won that year, he took this photo with us and the Borg right after he edged out Castroneves. Class act.

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Hell yeah

https://www.mecum.com/lots/SC0520-415156/1947-diedt-offenhauser-blue-crown-spark-plug-special/

Vintage Indy race car up for auction!!!

Where would you place it on the playfield?

Where would you place it on the playfield?</blockquote
It would be the ultimate topper, wheels spinning , engine could rev when you cross the finish line.. hmmm

So, mount it on top of the backbox? Awesome!

However, you would have to figure out a way to vent the exhaust.

Update for those interested in my custom race track decal. According to USPS it should have been delivered this past Wednesday to the owner helping me test fit it. However, as of this morning tracking still does not give an accurate ETA. Just wanted to let everyone know that the project is still active, but we are at the mercy of USPS at this point.

As a reminder, pricing will be as follows:
- $25 for my IMS pylon with 1995 race results
- $40 for my custom race track decal ($35 if you’ve already bought the pylon from me)
- $60 if ordering both together (Must order both at the same time to be eligible for discount. $35 offer above only applies to those pylon buyers before I offered the race track decal)

All prices include US shipping. International shipping is available on a per quote basis.

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6/3/20 USPS tracking showing item arrived in regional distribution center, so we have some movement. Sorry everyone, but under normal circumstances shipping should have only taken 4 days at the most.

Great. I already have the pylon. Awesome addition. Looking forward to the race track decal.

Thought I'd make a few pylons in preparation for order to soon come once we get the road decal tested. I 3D print the towers (took a little over 8 hours for these 6) in two colors. I print the decals on vinyl then coat will a clear gloss vinyl and cut to size. After cutting I color all of the edges black so that no white shows when installed. I also make all of the little pieces that go into the recesses at the base of the tower. I tried painting first, but decals are much easier and cleaner.

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Decals applied

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Okay, so I wanted to add a few more touches. I'm done now after mirror blades, custom targets with lights, pylon mod. I can't stand yellow targets. Also added a gate to turbo shot to avoid any rejections.

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Djshakes

I like the blue lane guides in top right area.

Beautiful work and great looking playfield. With all you've done, the circle track really stands out as something that definitely needs to be updated.

I hear you, okay, you twisted my arm. I'll pm you for a decal.

I clearcoated the playfield BTW.

Funny, I was so enamored with your playfield that I didn't even notice it was you.

I received a few questions about what gate I used to ensure no rejects from the turbo.

This is it.

https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/A-9465-R

USPS is killing me on delivering the test track decal. Package is still in limbo with last note being a couple of days ago. If I don't see progress by tomorrow, then I'll be enlisting another interested person to work with me on test fitting the decal. I'll be looking for the person that is the closest to Texas, so maybe shipping won't be such an issue (I really didn't think shipping to Indiana would be such a problem - geez!).

Ship 1 up here. Pony express still works in Denver. Be glad to test fit.

Funny, in that I order a lot of items from Comet Pinball in Colorado. Before Covid, I always received my packages within 3-4 days. Now sometimes it is taking 2 weeks, and 5-6 days at a minimum. Not sure why that is, but it is quite irritating.

I can test, I am in Nashville and packages are good to go here. Just got 6 USPS packages in 1-2 days.

Did you have to do any fabricating for the gate, or does it mount onto existing posts? And does it work every time, worth doing? Since I installed a cliffy’s I get a ton of rejects.

This is my 2nd I-500. This one has cliffy's and I too get a ton of rejects, very frustrating. I didn't get them on my old one w/o cliffy's.

It installs on the existing post. However, when I had the ramp off I put another screw through the plastic on the left to make sure it wouldn't shift around but not necessary. Man does it make a difference. My only issue was if you shoot two balls in one after another in multi-ball they will get stuck. I had this happen once out of 100 games. Far worth not having the frustration of nailing a shot and having it jump out.

Couldn't agree more. Waxing the playfield and installing a cliffy caused that shot to reject about 90% of the time on my machine - made the game not worth playing. I've had a homemade gate on there for the last couple of years and can say the reject rate is now maybe 1%. It's where I'm shocked for a moment that a clean shot there DOESN'T stick. So yes, this mod is definitely worth doing, even with the very occasional need to pull the glass to clear two balls in that wireform.

I haven't had this particular game very long, I may remove the cliffy and see if the majority of rejects go away.

Well, looking at tracking, the package has finally hit Indianapolis. With any luck, we're probably looking at a Monday-Tuesday delivery and we can get on with this.

I just got mine yesterday and have knocked out a few games. So 2 locked balls in the turbo starts multiball? and 3 locked balls during multiball gets jackpot?

The 2 ball lock threw me off because there are 3 lock inserts.

For what its worth, I installed a turbo lock cliffy when I first got mine and it lasted about a week. Rejects skyrocketed so I pulled it. Been great ever since.

Jackpot alternates ramps. Lock all three balls again for super.

Indy racing is BACK!

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Regarding the Cliffy protector, if you look on Cliffys website, he mentions that the ball stop has to be slightly straightened and bent at a different angle or the bounce outs do get worse. I started to try to follow his instructions but it looked like I was going to break the assembly (which is unobtanium) so I just removed the protector. I might try the one way gate from Marco.

I live less than 10 miles from TMS. Watched the race on TV, but was weird without fans. Also, for some reason the cars looked faster to me on TV in the empty stadium.

I've got Cliffys on everything but I500. Read too many stories like that, so I'm good.

Well, my decal finally made it, but there is something terribly wrong. I was under the assumption that the track was a perfect circle with the hole in the center, but this is apparently not the case. Rather, the track is an ellipse. Therefore, my decal will need to be completely redesigned. However, I will need someone to please provide me relevant measurements and/or a scan of the current track.

Here is what I was not understanding. I guess the road decal is oblong, the spindle is off center, and the plate is not actually just a circle, but a rounded off square. In order to shape the decal correctly, at this point I'll need someone to do a trace of the current track decal including the spindle hole, the scan it and send to me (or mail me the piece of paper with the trace). It shouldn't take me much effort/time to create the new track from that point.

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I followed Cliffy´s advice and bent the backstop at a different angle and this worked really well for me. The danger of breaking the assembly isn´t big if you are careful. In my first approach I bent it too far (~60 degrees). This reduced the bounces to zero , but also the number of balls making it up to the turbo to 10%, because the balls are hitting the backstop on their way up . The Cliffy recommendation of 45 degrees seems about right. I was getting almost no bounces anymore.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/freeplay40-ramps

Does anyone know why these guys haven't reproduced the "un-obtanium" left ramp for I500?

Freeplay doesn’t have a heater big enough to make ramps the size of what we need for I500. He did find one and is in the process of setting it up. There is hope.....

where are folks getting the real backglass for indy?

Okay, here is the new decal design that should match the OEM decal in shape.

At this point, I have one user testing a template I provided, but I'd like one or two more owners to test the shape as well. If you are able to print a template, cut out, and test fit then please download and print the attached PDF. FYI, the arrow is pointing to the front of the decal. When printing, be sure you select "Actual Size" in the PDF print settings window.

FYI, I'd like to get this done today, so we can move forward with the decal as soon as possible.

BTW, to download the PDF correctly, click on the thumbnail to enlarge it, then click the "Download PDF Document" blue button at bottom left of window.

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IndyTrack.pdf

I purchased a mostly populate playfield a while ago to practice clear coating. I have a lot of playfield parts that I most likely won't use, including a complete turbo rig (probably keep for now). If anyone needs rail guides, posts, standup targets, etc. let me know. I might have what you need.

Looking for wire form - right side, ball return to in-lane.