9 replies to this topic

[Shooter7mustang]

What are some of the techniques you guys use to flatten retro chassis ? 

[Highnoon]

Return to builder if new.

If used, get a chassis jig, see where it is bent and the start replacing bent pieces.

Or return to builder and ask for a rebuild.

If your a newbie return to builder.

If its a flexi or wing car throw away and buy a new chassis.

Other than retro, slot racing has become disposable chassis and motors, kind of like society in general.

Unless you dont think a perfectly flat chassis matters. In that case race it.

[Tim Wilkins]

For minor tweaks, we hand our cars to Duran Trujillo.  He wiggles the front tires and axle back and forth and presto - flat again 

[bbr]

when a chassis gets tweeked. if the construction of the design lets you, you can refloat the front axle. manhandling the chassis by twisting or bending puts in stresses and tension.

if its really bad, refloat all the major solder connections in a jig.

the actually chassis doesn't need to be really flat, the tire contacts and guide flag do.

[airhead]

large Hammer!

[The Number of]

50 ton hydraulic press.

[Jaeger Team]

In the early nineties I returned to Palermo, my hometown, after having lived and worked in northern Italy for a period of 17 years. I stopped playing slots in the early seventies and returned to briefly competing in Forlì on the occasion of an Italian wing cars championship in 1980. Then in Palermo I found some old friends and made friends with a group, which was a younger generation, who had lived in full of the 80s slot. These guys told me that there was, among them at that time, one considered an expert in building frames ... well this charhacter, to make chassis perfectly flatten, worked them for hours on a base where he had taped some abrasive paper !! LOL !!

[Steve Deiters]

If there is major damage like a bent front axle assembly or crunched rear end I remove the damaged section and prepare replacement parts.  

 

Reload it in a jig with no jig wheels so it is laying flat on the surface of the jig. Clean up the solder joints where the replacement parts are going. Straighten pans and nose piece as needed.

 

All joints where chassis main rails to the front and rear are fluxed and re-soldered as needed.  Sometimes you can hear slight "pop" when the joints become released and the solder then re-solidifies.  I usually do this step a couple times on the given joint  just to make sure.

 

I've found in retro  chassis with some brass main rails they  are typically stressed their entire length and need to just be replaced.  I always  replace with piano wire.

 

Once the joints have stress relieved reload in the jig with jig wheels and install the new parts.

[swodem]

50 ton hydraulic press.

“And then....?”




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[Justin A. Porter]

I have three steps for bent or otherwise damaged retro chassis. 

Step 1: Find Bud. 
Step 2: Give to Bud.
Step 3: Pay Bud.