You still need to do a lot of stuff up under the track before you’re ready to begin pulling the trigger and having fun racing. Now is a good time to borrow, beg, or buy an auto mechanic’s "Creepy Crawler" to make it easier on your body while you spend the next 48 hours, lying on your back and doing hundreds of electrical connections.

First, carefully trim off all excess braid that’s hanging down from each set of holes and be sure you’re putting the correct "pairs" of braid together. These "pigtails" can be - probably should be - no more than 3" in length. There’s no need to solder these connections and you don’t even want to try doing that job upside down! This is where you twist the braid together, then screw a plastic or rubber insulator twist connector onto the braid, then bend it up and staple it to the bottom of the track. (See Illustration #16.)

Do this on all the braid pairs EXCEPT where you will be locating your power taps and main power wires. Make certain the braid on the isolated section is stapled up and not near any "live" track braid pieces. Since electricity "feeds" in both directions, once you’ve completed a "circuit" on the lanes, use your volt/ohm meter and check each lane for continuity. You do not want any connection or "short" which would short out the system.

Another simple way to do this test is by putting a car in a slot and touching each side of the braid with two leads from a battery or your power supply. The car should travel smoothly (but very slime-illy) around the track and tell you whether or not you’ve completed a circuit on that lane and do not have any electrical shorts anywhere in the braid circuits.)