Hi Guys,
For those of you who have tinkerd, raced, tweaked, tuned, conjoled or otherwise dealt with the JL (not AW) chassis, how would you rate them by release? This would cover 10 releases of the JL T-Jets and 5 releases of JL X-Tractions. I am not talking about the bodies here, just the chassis. Are any better than the others? Are any almost unsalvageable?

Thanks...Joe

Both the JL Fast & Furious releases were relatively good for me. Many of my fastest XT chassis are from those releases. The very first release was the weakest. They've all been tweakable but the chassis was frequently warped in the first release and that's tougher for me to deal with.

With the Thunderjets, R1 seemed to have problems with warped chassis, however many have said the fastest chassis came from this group. Many have also said the chassis quality got better the next release. I've opened a few of each release and it seems the fastest cars I have are from the first two sets. But I could've been lucky and picked good cars to open. And finding freaky-fast chassis is a matter of luck (just like NOS tjet chassis).

The XT's seem to be good no matter which release you get, but one of my best runners is an R1 (again, it's luck of the draw), but the R1's did have the most problem with crooked rims and axles. Things again improved with each subsequent set, but even with the AW's you come across a bad rim here and there.

I've only had one major problem with a JL car, a F&F gold Mitsubishi Eclipse came with a chassis that had a crack by the rear axle. Was pretty bummed at the time, but at that time, lots of folks had parts and chassis lots going dirt cheap on e-bay so I just snarfed some parts there and replaced the bad chassis, which does run fast.

Don't pitch your JL chassis, after the basic tweaking you'll like how the run.

Though these are AW cars, the 2nd Mopars (XT's) through to the R3 AW's, the inconvenience is the enlarged front axle hole which are easily dealt with by using Thunderjet front axles and rear XT rims (reaming one rim out to make the axle independant). After that they behave like earlier releases.

Although I collect the XTrac styles opposed to the TJets. If I recall, it seemed that around round three on Tjets things started getting better. Less tweaking and better perfomances right out of the box, of course with the traditional lubing first. I'm sure some of the TJet collectors will jump in here.

:thumbsup: rr

On the JL TJet side, the R6 seemed to be about the best ones for me, mostly because the brush holes were sized about where they should be. The JL chassis seemed to be in a constant state of change as they sought to fix issues with one aspect of the chassis or another. Overall though, they can all be tuned and tweaked to perform quite well.

I picked up one of the new Auto World Tjets with the one traction magnet. After tuninng it and "Fraying" it up a bit, this chassis is a blast to run! Smooth, fast, driftable and predictable!

Haven't had too many problems with the X-Tractions. Tuff Ones have been a different story. The fastest ones I have are the black chassis. I have run into problems with all of the releases. But they seem to be better with each release.

My overall rating of these chassis is good. When you get them tuned they are just as fast or faster than the originals. Although the originals ran / run much better out of the box. Randy.

I still prefer the original Magnatractions out of the box but since so many of the parts are interchangeable, the JL cars can be great with some tweaking. The JL cars have slightly thicker and stronger motor magnets wich is great since any original AFX magnets are bound to be a little weaker after over 30 years.

I like the grey johnny lightning with the blue and white magnets, I usually add traction magnets and they run like beasts. with any release you can get a dud or a winner

The F&F chassis are my best running chassis. I like r4 of the Tuff Ones because the rear axles are not as sloppy in the holes.

The F&F chassis are my favorite chassis to run out of all the chassis I have, including my Auroras.