I recently ordered 10 T-Dash 2.0 chassis. Well they came in the other day and I thought I would give my opinion on Dan Cashmer's new product. I am no expert, but here's my dime's worth. If you're interested then read on...

If you have read the rules for either "The Fray" or "The ECHORR challenge they both have statements about how the armature measurements will be taken at the current available room(ambient) temperature. Have you ever wondered why? If so, then read on.

When building a competitive car you should use matched magnets... sounds simple enough... pull out the magnet matcher or gause meter and start measuring magnets until you find a matching reference number (if using a magnet matcher) or a matching gause reading on two magnets (1 north, 1 south). Well this is what I thought until Greg Wisniewski explained the "finer points" of magnet matching. The image to the right is what started it all. I would like to thank Greg Wisniewski for sharing this with me and you who are reading this should thank him for allowing me to share it with you.

This is the second part of a three part series about the Auto World ThunderJet Ultra-G chassis. In the first part we discussed the out of the box chassis to include visual inspection and measurements taken on individual parts. We then ran the car on the track to establish a baseline with respect to time. You can read part 1 here. In this article we will cherry pick the parts from the 5 cars that were purchased and see what kind of increases we can obtain with this chassis. 

Like most of you I was introduced to the Aurora T-Jet as a kid. Then as I got older my interests and attention were diverted to other things. After thirty or forty years I have made full circle and now have picked up this hobby again. And like you, I have found that now we have in addition to the T-Jet there is also the T-Dash and Auto World's ThunderJet. I had been resisting taking the plunge into Auto World's product for various reasons but as of late have read that The T-Dash chassis is sort of up in the air as to if it will be around much longer. So I thought I would see what Auto World's ThunderJet Ultra-G was about and if it is a chassis I can work with.

If you are looking at building and racing T-Jets competitively with your local group, you might want to be aware of the infamous T-Jet chassis number 4 (#4). This applies to the #4 open rivet chassis and NOT the #4 solid rivet chassis.

Here are some chassis considerations when building your Fray and or racing car. As you know Aurora mass produced the parts for the T-Jet, therefore, there were varying degrees with respect to quality. After all, these were made as toys. I don't think Aurora ever thought the T-Jet would evolve to it's current level of performance. That said, here are some guide lines when choosing a chassis and top plate.

Over the course of the past few months I have come to like the Auto World X Traction chassis. Initially I was not impressed with the chassis out of the box. But then I remembered that Christmas in the early 60's when we got our Thunder Jet racing set. All Christmas day we worked to make those cars go around that track. I was fortunate as a kid to have a Dad that was mechanically and electrically inclined. By the end of the day we had those cars running pretty good. That said, I thought I would try the basics to improve the performance of the X Traction... and you know they actually run pretty good!

If you've thought about any kind of competitive racing you should consider lapping the gears. Its not difficult and you just might like the results. Your can achieve anywhere from 10 to 15 percent increase in speed just by lapping the gears on the gear plate.