I'm just wondering, is it common for these things to need a little work out of the box? I don't remember buying my old AFX's and having to work on them right away. It's nothing too horrible, I bought 3, 1 has tires that seem to be out of round and it bounces a lot on the track. The other (my oldest sons) I had to try to fix the gear plate, turns out the gear at the rear of the motor plate (under, the one that drives the axle gear) was drilled out crooked, and the axles seem to need to be shimmed up. I'm not complaining, in fact its great to show the kids how they work, but I was just a little surprised. Perhaps I just got a couple of Monday morning, Friday night deals?

Thanks, Dave

Dave,
The short answer is yes - you need to work on them right out of the box.

If you had Aurora T-Jets and AFX in the past, you know a lot of the tuning techniques. However, check through the "Tuning Tips" section of this board and you will find a LOT of information on correcting the problems with the JL and AW cars.
Once corrected, they tend to run well.

Joe

Depending on which round, some fared better than others through the manufacturing process. Either way, they're not too hard to get tweaked to the point of decent TJet performance. Have fun! :) rr

If you need to replace either of the rear cluster gears, you should replace both of them, along with the cluster shaft with Aurora cluster gears and shaft. The AW/JL shafts have knurled ends.

Or (if you can find any) just grab a another gearplate assembly. Several people have parts lots on e-bay. Always good to have spare parts onhand to replace any defectives you come across.

Yep, like these guys have stated already, they unfortunately do not make them like they used to which is sad.... That being said, you can also find the new old stock chassis out on ebay pretty handily. It's sad that I can put a couple drops of oil on a 30 year old car and it runs great versus buying something brand new and having to replace gearing and tweak the heck out of them. Pretty pathetic actually.

Like you are saying, it is good to show your kids how things work, so for that I suppose it's a good thing and we should all thank AW for enabling us to be able to crawl under the hood. ;-)

Welcome to the group, there are lots of really knowledgeable folks here that can help you fix just about anything with these cars.

Bottom line is that some are ready to run and some are not.

Most all of the little problems are easy enough to correct for peanuts.

That being said the gear replacement is a little more than peanuts. It requires some basic pancake knowledge and is where we fall out away from the basic tuning issues characteristic to these cars.

After determining that the arm gear is pressed on straight. I have found that replacing the driven cluster along with the crown and rear axle with t-jet components is the ticket. I also like to replace the idler so the gear rack is brass all the way across, but it is not neccesary, merely a preference.

A few notes:

1: ensure that the pinion shaft has proper clearance in the gearplate, A light ream with a pindrill or straight fine flute axle is all it takes.

2: same deal with the chassis tail plate - Make sure the pinion shaft turns freely where it inserts into it's chassis journal, it's too tight to accept the t-jet pinion shaft; again just a light reaming til it freewheels.

3: Be sure and take a look at the pinion/crown mesh. I've seen several that have required a small shim between the pinion and gearplate to establish a stable final mesh. This will correct pinion shaft endfloat and prevent garging up the crown gear. Micro shims are readily available through R/C suppliers.

4: 'Round here, I just finish them up with a quikee gearlap using "Ultra Bright" toothpaste. I find it has the best of both worlds in that it works nicely on both brass and plastic gears in combination or seperate. Water washable makes it very easy for novices. The lap is critical to smoothing things out and getting those last few RPM out of the JL/AW gear conversion.

Most important to keep in mind is accurate diagnosis. Some of the little buggers do run quite well out of the can and DONT require much beyond some minor tweaking. Ya just gotta decide whether your car was made on friday or not!

Thank you very much for all the replys. I've been hanging new doors in our house the last two days and havn't had time to look at them.....Meanwhile, my kids are checking out ebay for new ones. Have Fun!!! :thumbsup: