Guys,

I know I'm far from knowing all there is to know about HO, but, got a question on two chassis I have. Both look brand spankin new. Both have a stamp on the top plate that says "AW Round 2, LLC. 2000 Made in China." The difference? One sounds all crunchy and like the gears are messed up and the other runs smooth and nearly soundless. One, when I look at it, looks like it is sloppy gear meshing (potentially the sound I hear) while the other, appears to be "tight" or properly meshing. It's like one has a ton of imperfections and the other does not. Now, I know that they are probably mass produced and what not, but is this just a luck of the draw on the good one? Any one have a bit more info on these chassis? And how can I potential make the bad one run like the good one without sinking a ton of cash into it?

Thanks for the feedback and input!
PD2:thumbsup:

I'm absolutely NOT an expert here, just getting back into the hobbie withmy kids, but I've noticed for the most part that the newer AW are a higher quality than the older JL models. Although, we had a couple of older JL release T-Jets that ran great out of the box, some, though I had to buy newer gear plates from the AW series to get them to run better. Three are a lot of guys here that know how to lap gears, and that's something I want to learn how to do in the future.

I posted under the tuning section about how touchy the older JL's are and that the newer AW's are more drivable. Again, don't know why. My gues is it's the luck of the draw. I've had a couple of newer AW TJets not run too great, gears not meshing etc also.

As far as the Xtra Tractions go, most have been pretty good, although some newr ones better than others. hth. Dave:wave:

The cars are pretty cheap.I just part out the crappy
running ones.Save the chassis ,shoes,brushes,arm,
guide pin,springs.Throw the gear plate and gears away.
Many of the chassis are warped,I check mine with drill
blanks and throw away the real bad ones.Stagger the
front tire sizes to compensate on the less warped ones.
I have yet to find a perfectly flat JL chassis.

Here is a tutorial on how to lap gears:

http://frhoracing.com/slot-car-gear-lapping-tutorial.ashx

This might sound crazy, but it's worth a shot.. Remove the clip. and turn the idler gear over and reassemble. I had a bum chassis I did this too and it helped. It seemed like the gear was trying to "walk up" away from the top plate, and by changing it's rotation it made it stay down. If that doesn't do it, lapping the gears may or may not help. Some chassis have way too much play in the gears as it is...

Improving the gear mesh is a snap. First, take the clamp from the top plate and give it a slight downwards bow. This will keep the middle gear (idler) from moving up and down, along with giving the top plate a tighter fit. Then, wiggle the rear top gear to see if it has lots of play (which would allow the gears to not mesh). If it is very wobbly, you need to take off the top plate, turn it over and you'll see the open side of the rivet. You want to gently hammer that side to clean up some of that excess play ( be careful not to bind up the gear). That should take care of your gear problems.

I second that the overall quality of the Auto World chassis has improved in the later (Ultra-G) releases, but what was true in the beginning is still true today.

You have one runner and one to use for parts.

LOL one of my favorite subjcts. Some of the earlier released AW chassis really had some meshing problems(they stunk). I bought 4 cars from one release and 3 had bad gears. They seem to have fixed the problem with later releases...but you just never know with AW.

You can replace the idler gear with a Aurora brass one and even replace the drive and pinion gears. I personally try to use Aurora chassis when I can. I know this is NOT cost effective but at least I know what i'm up against with the Aurora.

The AW chassis are cheap enough.....use the better ones and strip the others for parts is also a good sugestion.

I echo what the others have said. AW quality control doesn't really exist so buy a few more and start switching parts.

A-Dub left the quality control in our hands and kept the price down...not a bad "stragedy" if ya think aboudit.

Hi all,

Sorry for not keeping up with the topic yesterday - worked until almost 9pm and was exhausted (still trying to recover from being sick and working is not fun).

Some great suggestions here and sounds like I got my work cut out for me on this one chassis. I guess Bill said it best - AW keeps the costs down and leaves the QA to the buyer. But as great as that is, if you are a newbie or maybe your a Dad who has purchased the car for your kiddo...does that mean that Dad needs to now become a "tuner"/QA guy for his kid's toys?

If so, let me pose this question - regardless of the car maker, when you get a new car, what is your standard procedure to "QA" and maybe "tune" the car to quickly elliminate any issues? Do you have a "punch list" of things you do to quickly determine issues and fix them? And if you do find an issue, what course of action do you take to resolve that particular issue?

Thanks again for all the details and help! I may have some time to mess with this later or even over the weekend - I'll let you know what I find, if anything with the "odd" AW chassis.

Thanks!
PD2:thumbsup:

There are generally 4 things you need to check when you break out an AW/JL car (Thunderjet or XT):

1 - Pickup shoes. The factory just jams them on, making for horrible contact with the rails.
2 - Rims. Many cars come with untrue rims, which make for bad running/handling.
3 - Gears/Clamp. You know what happens when they don't mesh right.
4 - Lubrication. Any new pancake-motored car needs lubed before its first run.

After you address these basics issues, then you can work on the 'hidden' issues that usually robs your car of speed:

Compressed springs (pickup or comm)
Comm brush holders hanging under the chassis
Rear gear rivets
Nubs on the rims

Oh yeah! learn something new everyday!:thumbsup:(you know i was going to ask the same thing and after i come back from bud's(no offence bud) im sure i'll be looking at this post...copperhead 71 the king off mix and match aw chassis/j.l parts and the other way around till it goes fast or at least run's..you know i'm new..

A-Dub left the quality control in our hands and kept the price down...not a bad "stragedy" if ya think aboudit.

Yeah, I agree that it's not a bad strategy for us folks out here that know how to tweak a car and are willing to do so to get it run. But if you think about it, how many of "us" are out there versus "them". And by "them" I mean the Dad's that remember the cars being fun as kids and want to share with their own young un's. I imagine everyone fights over the one car that runs well, the POS gets tossed into a corner and forgotten about and sooner or later Dad tires of just running the one car and the fights that go along with it.

AW could do themselves a HUGE favor by having better quality control so that all cars run out of the box. I don't recall having an MT or a G+ that was a pile when I was a kid, and just ran them them till they burned up as I had no idea you could tune em. That being said, I raced my cars a LOT and only had a couple that ended up dying after a couple of years. :)

Yes, the cars would cost a little bit more, but if you have to adopt the adage of "buy 2 to get 1 that runs" it doesn't say much about the manufacturer. Which is why if I want to run these things, I go find the originals on the 'bay or elsewhere.

My luck with the AW x tractions has been pretty good. Between the JL and AW versions, Ive bought a LOT of them, prolly over 100 at least going back to '03. Ever since they changed the formulation of the material, they seem to just hold together better. The first release of JL XTs had a problem where the front part of the plate wouldnt lock into the chassis properly, and it would drift over to one side with the torque of the arm, binding it. Seems the material is just too soft to properly locate that part.

I did have one AW that was warped pretty badly into a 3-wheeler, and it seems that every other one needs to have some tweaking done to the pickups, and the little tabs that hold the com brushes and springs are never in there nice and flat like I like em.

The biggest, hardest to fix problem Ive seen as of yet is the rearmost plate gear is sometimes drilled off center which leads to bad gear mesh. Sometimes to the point that it skips on one side and binds on the other against the idler, but thats pretty rare.

I do wish theyd go back to the rear tires they were using back from the first JL XTs. The compound has the perfect mix of grip and slide, and I dont think Ive ever had one out of round. Then they reformulated a year or two deep into the AW releases and while some of those tires are good, some are wobbly.

I only own a few of the JL and AW T-jets since Ill only buy those if its a must-have bodystyle. Not much of a T-jet guy. But Ive noticed that since AW took over, the QC issues are much more prevalent on the T-jets than the XTs.

I worked a little on the bad chassis yesterday. Didn't do everything suggested (I know, probably a big no-no) but one thing I did notice is that when everything is assembled that rear gear that has the shaft down to the crown gear on the axle wobbles up and down on occassion - this was me just rolling the tires by hand. I don't think the gear itself is warped - I think it's like what grungerockjeepe said about it being drilled off center or something. Of course, when you remove the idler gear both the gear going to the comm and the rear gear shafts are just wobbling around through the top plate - is that supposed to be that way? Seemed a bit "overdrilled" if you ask me, unless this is their way to compensate for poor tolerances in the gear assembly?

The only other thing I found was that the brushes seemed to have this "wedge" or "beveled" aspect to the part that makes contact with the comm. It wasn't a ridge or severe point, but as compared to some of my other cars, it was not a flat surface either. Is that by design and is it normal? I cleaned them up as best as I could with an eraser and polisher from my Dremel. I also cleaned up the comm - lots of carbon build up on both...kind of weird for a new car, eh?

I bent the clip as you guys said and reassembled everything. Car had a little better performance, but still a lot more noise than the other car. May have another go at it doing the cleaning up of the excess play as dlw mentioned. Which, by the way, thanks for the tips and input on your suggested inspection list of things to do to cars before you run them. On the lube, will white lithium lube work just fine? It's what I used for my 1/32 cars when I raced them heavily.

Thanks again!
PD2:thumbsup:

The wobblin' gears are placed there to hypnotize you into thinkin that these are great cars and you should buy more .....collect them all.... trade with your friends....now cluck like a chicken! :tongue:

Much like the jumble in the Sunday paper....the trick is finding enough parts within tolerance to fix them up. T-jet's were out of tolerance like horseshoes and handgrenades... The AW stuff is whacked on a planetary scale... earthquakes and atom bombs.

.010" + on an arm shaft is not clearance! That's broken!

And "The Man" has spoken!:thumbsup:

In your situation PD2, I would replace the crown gear, the pinion shaft and lower gear with an Aurora shaft and pinion. The aurora shaft is a bit larger diameter so it should tighten up the excessive clearance issue. The car will be slower top end, but have a bit more torque pulling out of the curves. Kinda like putting in a set of 411 gears in a 1:1 car. Use the AW/JL top gear and check for mesh clearance with the rest of the gear train. You might need to open up the pinion shaft hole in the chassis a little to fit the Aurora shaft. And the top plate might need it a little too. If you need to open up the top plate hole, favor the hole towards the rear of the car. I do this conversion alot to slow my cars down, and it does help the sloppy gear train trouble. If that don't work, consider it a parts chassis...

The wobblin' gears are placed there to hypnotize you into thinkin that these are great cars and you should buy more .....collect them all.... trade with your friends....now cluck like a chicken! :tongue:

Much like the jumble in the Sunday paper....the trick is finding enough parts within tolerance to fix them up. T-jet's were out of tolerance like horseshoes and handgrenades... The AW stuff is whacked on a planetary scale... earthquakes and atom bombs.

.010" + on an arm shaft is not clearance! That's broken!

That's funny stuff! Sad, but funny stuff. As you mentioned before, being used 250,000 times before changing a mold or mule seems to not go very far other than China making their shipment to a paying customer.

Wonder how much longer its going to take before the "Buy American" clause hits products like this and not just Government projects and works?

PD2:thumbsup:

In your situation PD2, I would replace the crown gear, the pinion shaft and lower gear with an Aurora shaft and pinion. The aurora shaft is a bit larger diameter so it should tighten up the excessive clearance issue. The car will be slower top end, but have a bit more torque pulling out of the curves. Kinda like putting in a set of 411 gears in a 1:1 car. Use the AW/JL top gear and check for mesh clearance with the rest of the gear train. You might need to open up the pinion shaft hole in the chassis a little to fit the Aurora shaft. And the top plate might need it a little too. If you need to open up the top plate hole, favor the hole towards the rear of the car. I do this conversion alot to slow my cars down, and it does help the sloppy gear train trouble. If that don't work, consider it a parts chassis...

Thanks Slotcarman! Are Aurora shafts and gears plentiful - can I get them at most online retailers? Just wondering because you see plenty of aftermarket and AW/JL stuff, but not sure where I've seen just Aurora parts.

I have not had a chance to go back and try some of the other suggestions that dlw made. Hopefully I'll have some time later on today to mess with it.

Thanks again all!
PD2:thumbsup:

The shaft/pinion and crown gears are available on the bay. A well stocked HS that has Tjets might have them. If you have a dead tjet chassis you could harvest the parts from it. If you or a racin' buddy don't have one, you can prolly get them here way faster here than on the bay.

http://www.jaghobbies.com/ho_slot_cars/parts_aurora_cart.htm
you want the standard crown gear, and it appears the top plate has the driven gear and pinion and shaft you need. I would call and ask them if the gears are included with the top plate B4 purchasing!!!

There is a seller named gramba on the bay that sells them, but lately it takes over 3 weeks to get the parts... (23 days and counting on my last purchase) so buying from him is up to your patience level.

RTHO makes them as well. :thumbsup:

I guess one of the main problems is always the question of how much time or cash yer gonna throw at one of these chassis. Establishing what your time, money, and cars are worth is a personal task. The reality is... "probably not"!

...and yet we persist :freak:

Here's a short trip in the way back... only to prove that my time is pert near worthless...LOL. RE: posts 72 & 73

http://www.hobbytalk.com/bbs1/showthread.php?t=215904&page=5

Submitted with the intent to show that even with stone knives and bear skins for toolage A-dubs can be made to conform to a higher standard. The question is ....How much time ya wanna spend at it?

I prefer the jl tjets, when your done working on them they run great and can be made a lot quieter than the newer aw chassis. here is what I do:
1) break it down clean off all white grease
2) roll the bare chassis with the wheels and tires on, check for bumpyness lol
somtimes you find a lot of bs right there with crooked wheels etc.
3) put gear plate on with idler, and clamp, take dremel with wire wheel on it. run wheel on gears move around from one mesh point to other and reverse dirrection, not a lot on the plastic gears you should get the gears spinning if your doing it right. as you do this you will hear the speed increase and the sound will improve.
4) wipe off all gears, reassemble, check the rear cluster gear, if wobbly press it down slightly to remove play, and oil as normal
5) at this point it should run quite well, you can go further with adding a drill rear axel, low pro silicones etc.
6) Enjoy!

PD2, the lithium grease you mentioned should be fine for your gears. I use lithium grease on mine.

PD2, the lithium grease you mentioned should be fine for your gears. I use lithium grease on mine.

Lithium is really helpful if the chassis is depressed too. Some chassis will perk right up. With others, you gotta try Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft or Lexapro to see what will help. If you think bad gearmesh or wobbley wheels are trouble, you'll think again when you get a depressed chassis... :freak::drunk:

Lithium is really helpful if the chassis is depressed too. Some chassis will perk right up. With others, you gotta try Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft or Lexapro to see what will help. If you think bad gearmesh or wobbley wheels are trouble, you'll think again when you get a depressed chassis... :freak::drunk:

Or send into rampage where it bites your friend's face off and is killed by police when it tries to get in the patrol car with the officer.

Or send into rampage where it bites your friend's face off and is killed by police when it tries to get in the patrol car with the officer.

I think it's just the Rotofast chassis that is prone to this behavior...

Slotcarman,

Thanks for the information and link. Unfortunately I have no old/bad TJet chassis laying around...all the cars are "running" at this time and work just fine. Guess I haven't been around long enough to accumulate a stock pile of old/bad stuff...but this might be the first one, eh? If I decided to purchase the gears and what not from Jag I'll be sure to contact them first and talk about what I need to verify the parts.

Bill,

You are right about that - regardless of what anyone says, time is money no matter the value it represents. If I can get this chassis up and running for little to nothing, then I'll be happy. But if its going to take more than what the chassis is worth, might as well begin my bad/old/parts pile with this chassis. Definitely a good reminder and thanks!

T-Jet Racer,

Thank you for your punch list of what you do to inspect your cars when you get them! This is a good list and one I'll incorporate with the others I have received from dlw and others! Thank you!

dlw,

Thank you for verifying that grease. Just didn't want to gum up the gears with too heavy or the wrong grease. I appreciate the help!

resinmonger and twolff,

Now that's some funny stuff right there! It's a one time treatment so I'll let you know how the chassis demeanor is once its been injected. LOL! That's funny right there, I don't care who you are! HEHEHEHEHEH!

Unfortunately, I got tied up with finishing up some "honey-do's" around the house and getting ready for my business trip that I leave today for and never got another opportunity to work on the chassis. So unfortunately, this is gonna have to wait till after I come back on Saturday. :( I'll let you guys know how things work out once I work on the chassis again though.

Thanks for all the help and comedy!
PD2:thumbsup:

I shot an e-mail off to JAG Hobbies about the top plate and some other parts to verify that they will be what I need. Mean while, I need to pick this back up and go through the car doing some of the other items mentioned to see if I can just fix it with what I have now. Now that I'm back from my week long business trip I ought to have some time, sometime. LOL! I'll let you know if I run into any questions.

One question right now - recalling the brushes and how I found them...should they be more flat or is it OK for them to be a bit "wedge" shaped where they make contact with the comm?

Thanks again guys!
PD2:thumbsup:

I would get JAG to include some new brushes with your order. If nothing else you will see how brushes should look when they are new. Brushes shouldn't be wedge shaped.

I beg to differ Tom.. Aurora brushes are flat. AW factory brushes have a slot on the bottom to prevent spinning during use, and the top is angled in a wedge shape.. probably so it wears out faster..:lol: I'm not sure how aftermarket brushes look for these, but the OEM stuff is as PD2 described..

OOPS I didn't read the whole thread, my bad. Disregard the above. I thought you were working on a used chassis. Shift gears, here we go. Make sure the brushes are flat on top and bottom and that the brushes will move up and down in the brush holes (barrels) first. If that is all good, make sure the metal strips on the bottom that hold the brushes (brush tensioners), are centered properly in their respective barrels and that they are parallel to the bottom of the chassis..nuther words level and plumb. Tweaking the brush tension is another fine art. Bending the little tabs up or down for more or less tension is something that takes practice. Look at how far the brushes stick up from the floor of your good running chassis and use that for a guide for setting the height of your brushes. That should get you in the ball park.

I got one reply from JAG yesterday - unfortunately, they tell me that the Aurora top plate and gears will not fit or work with an AW Round 2 car. I did ask about the standard brushes from Aurora and I was told that they might work, but that they maybe a different size. I also found out that the top plate has all the gears except for the idler and pinion, so I'm missing a gear if I go with that top plate (aside from it not working on the AW chassis). I replied to JAG and asked them that if that was not the correct parts for the AW Round 2 chassis', then which parts on their website would work - I'm still waiting for a reply. If they do not have the AW Round 2 parts that fit/work, does anyone know of another on-line dealer that has these parts?

TomH and Slotcarman, thanks for the input....yes, Slotcarman is correct, the bottom of the brushes has a slot or notch so that the metal strips rest in that slot and they do not spin around - it was the top of the brush that was weird/different than my T-Jet 500's and cars like that that were flat topped brushes. Like Slotcarman said, I guess its designed that way to wear them out quicker? I thought they were odd and that I'd just replace them if I was going to order parts.

Thanks for the brush tension tips Tom - I've actually played around a bit with, especially when I've received a car that does go and I notice that these tabs and not even making contact with the brushes. I actually did what you said regarding the brush tensioners when I tore the chassis down last time and that was one of the things that seemed to improve the car a bit. When or if I get the new brushes, I'm sure I'll do it again.

Thanks again for the help!
PD2:thumbsup:

Well, PD2, they're right and wrong in their answer but that is to be expected. The Aurora top plate will not fit, and the pinion gear/shaft will not not either without modifications. If I can figure out how to make my camera shoot video without my having to hold the button down, and can rig up a tripod of sorts to aim it, I may shoot a short Bill Hall style video of the modification process and the parts used to do this little trick. Once you've done a couple, it's a 5 minute conversion to a 9 tooth pinion. Sadly, pets aren't allowed here so I won't have the luxury of a grey furball sound man/ director/ producer.... :tongue:

Another option is to get a hold of T-Jet Racer (here on HT) and see how much he sells NOS AW chassis for. He's got great prices and the cost of a replacement may convince you to make a spare parts chassis out of the defective one and just get another.. He can be found on the swap and sell board, and in chat nearly every evening...

If you are going to run JL/AW stuff it's probably most cost effective to buy 'em by the dozen and sort them according to useability. Stuff the dosen't run goes to the parts bin. "Dogs" get set aside for the kids and thier friends. What's left after that is probably worth tuning and you will need parts off the non-runners eventually anyway.

There are also eBay sellers that strip JL/AW cars and sell lots of the various parts. Filling a hole that AW left in the market. Yeah, they had/have tune-up kits, but they are about the same price as an entire new car.

Slotcarman,

JAG replied and said that the JL parts would fit the AW chassis. The top plate with armature that he has (only replacement part for the top plate) has the driven gear, shaft and pinion....it has everything, except the idler gear (which I think its fine). He also has the brushes from JL - what's funny is that from the pictures it looks like the brushes are wedged up top too! So I suppose they are factory set like that. Weird, but OK?

So far, the parts are maybe $3-$4, plus shipping. I'll check with T-Jet Racer and see what his NOS chassis go for and maybe make a decision. I was going to make a few other purchases just to justify the shipping costs, but if I can keep my purchase costs down with T-Jet Racer then I may stick to just getting what I need for now.

Twolff,

This car I'm working on is one that I won in the HOHT auction from last year. I had it sitting on a shelf for a while and finally decided I needed to run the car. So when I purchased it, it came with this chassis and I did not know that these chassis were like this. Moving forward, you are right - if I'm out to purchase a JL/AW chassis, it won't be in singles. I just don't have the scratch right now to be buying lots of them. I'd just like to get this car running right so that it will keep up with the other custom HOHT auction car I won at the same time. LOL! I've been searching e-Bay to find those parts guys but have yet to see anything - mainly chassis, RTR's, and bodies. And yes, I saw those "tune up" kits on AW's site - $15 is not a "kit". LOL!

Thanks guys for the replies! I appreciate it! Going to check with T-Jet Racer before I make a decision on parts or NOS Chassis purchase.

Thanks!
PD2:thumbsup:

This is only one of a few JL/AW "parts guys" on eBay:
http://shop.ebay.com/merchant/midshipslotcar

Thanks twolff - add them as a favorite in e-Bay. Didn't see anything in terms of the parts I was looking for so I'll just add him to the favs for the future.

I actually got in contact with T-Jet Racer and I'm getting a chassis from him! GREAT guy and VERY nice and generous! Hopefully this will resolve my poor performing chassis issue. I'll update once I have the new one installed.

Thanks for all the help and thanks T-Jet Racer! I really appreciate it!
PD2:thumbsup:

UPDATE!

Got my new chassis for T-Jet Racer and so far, it appears to have resolved the poor performance and quality issues. Now that I have a second chassis, I can at least begin mixing parts between the two chassis to correct any JL/AW issues.

I want to give props to T-Jet Racer. If no one has dealt with him yet then take it from me - DEAL! He is definitely one of the good guys and not someone to hesitate on whether or not to purchase anything from him. VERY kind, generous, and more than fair! He just takes care of people and likes doing it - it's obvious he has figured out the customer service side of the business! I, for one, once my cash flow is back to hobby level, will be purchasing some things from him without hesitation! Without him, my little T-jet Cobra racer would not be up to snuff. Thanks T-Jet Racer! I really appreciate you!

Like many of you stated, you can tell the difference in this chassis compared with my first one - the "slop" appears to be a lot less, if not completely gone, and even when it runs its a lot quieter...the usual T-jet noise is there, but definitely not like the old chassis.

Looks like I'll have my collection of "pick-a-part" chassis started now. Thanks again to all those that helped out. And thanks to slotcarman for directing me over to T-Jet Racer! Word of mouth helps these guys out and I for one will always have a good word for both of them!

PD2:thumbsup: