Or at least I think they must judging by the latest release of the 4 Gear cars.
I unopened a VW Baja Bandito (Orange Metallic) last night and put it directly on the track, no prep whatsoever.

She ran Great!
No bouncing, no "Box of Rocks" geartrain noise, nothing!
The rear tires are even awesome.

I ran 20 laps then checked arm temp and pickup shoe wear pattern.
Arm was cool and pickups were wearing near the front as usual, but nothing severe.
I adjusted shoes while still on chassis with a pocket knife and proceeded to pull the top gears off to remove the "Porcupine Gum" that AW thinks is oil.

I did not however pull the arm plate as everything seems fine, brush tension is good but not too heavy.
Cleaned the gears off and oiled with Mobile 5-30w and put her back together.
Cleaned off rear tires and back on the track for 30 laps.
Faster, but not by a whole bunch. I was running 18 volts and the car seemed to top out at about 15 feet. Probably the lower gearing.
Had nice braking action which is good as I do not wire for brakes. I prefer to set up a car to roll through the turns.

Anyway, this new chassis is very consumer friendly and I think AW has hit a home run.

Anyone else have experience?
Thanks,
Keith

Glad to see AW is making improvements. I had a wobbly wheel on each of the 2 I bought, but replacements thru slotcarcentral are cheap and plentiful and Ive seen that on every make of slotcar Ive ever owned at one time or another. I wont complain!

I bought 3 of them. 2 of them ran great with no problems at all. The 3rd has noisy gears and a bent rear axle. I like them, there a lot of fun.

Good ones do occasionally slip through. I've had a couple myself.

How can bent axles continuallt be a problem?

Jim Norton
Huntsville, AL

How can bent axles continuallt be a problem?

Jim Norton
Huntsville, AL

Bent axles would have three prime drivers: material selection, assembly process, and quality requirements.

A stiffer axle material would be less likely to bend. That would be a reason one sees drill blank material being used for after-market axles. The trade off for AW would be a material price increase per unit.

When we were kids in the 60's, screwdrivers and pliers were the common tools used to take off and put on wheels. Did axles get bent and wheels get put on off-center? You bet. Today, we can buy several different handy tools to do this work pretty much error free. This would beg the question - what tooling is used to install wheels to axles by AW's chassis supplier? If tooling is the issue, an investment in tooling would also add to unit cost but it would be amortized over continued production and eventually wash out of the cost.

The last issue comes down to cost of quality. Is the supplier required to measure how the bare chassis with both axle assemblies rolls? If there is no requirement, they probably don't measure it and it costs them (the supplier) nothing. If there is a requirement and they are not meeting it, the supplier would have rejections. At some point, the rate of rejection would make it cost effective for the supplier to fix the problem if it driven by their process or ask AW to allow use of stiffer axle material if that were the root cause of the problem.

We don't know what requirement for axle assembly straightness is included in AW's contract with their supplier.

Are the 4-gear axles intherchangeable with axles from any other AW chassis?

No, they are shorter than other AW (or JL) axles, but longer than tjet axles.

High play-doh content.

High play-doh content.

HAHA!!! I think youre onto something, Bill. All I gotta say is replacements for the random faulty part are cheap and plentiful thru slotcar central.

HAHA!!! I think youre onto something, Bill. All I gotta say is replacements for the random faulty part are cheap and plentiful thru slotcar central.

Thank yer lucky stars for Slot Car Bob! :thumbsup: