# NOS ThunderJet 500 alternative..



## WooffWooff (Dec 23, 2009)

I believe it's widely understood that hardly anyone in "HO" slot cars race the original Aurora AFX chassis. I believe it is a viable alternative for those who love T-jet race'n. They are cheap and plentiful, use the pancake motor, and no traction magnets. Also they are easy to make go VERY fast and require little maintainence. We usually don't have the race-time to dedicate to AFX, but we do occasionally and the are lots of fun, very much like the 'ol jets, just faster. Brass fronts and sponge tires really smooth'em out too. If there were no more NOS T-jets (or they get too much more expensive), I would chose AFX over the AW/JL chassis. I've been meaning to try and slow the AFX chassis down (more too the t-jet speeds us old guys like) by removing the pan/dish that the pickup shoe spring sits in. I think that would make it handle and feel more like a jet than a AFX. Has anybody already tried that out there?


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## hojoe (Dec 1, 2004)

WooffWooff said:


> removing the pan/dish that the pickup shoe spring sits in


What would hold the springs in place?
hojoe


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## WooffWooff (Dec 23, 2009)

hojoe said:


> What would hold the springs in place?
> hojoe


You might try and carve out a "cup" in the chassis or just paint on a 'lil super-glue and stick the spring to it. You could also glue a "nipple" where the spring sits to keep it from coming out. I'm gonna try it one day.


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## clydeomite (May 5, 2004)

Bad Idea!!! There is a hole under the cup so you have to cut a piece of plastic or " bondo" the hole shut to have a surface for the spring. As a side note I took the hardware from and AFX and put it on a junk t-jet chassis and now it one of my favorite cars. I also soldered the plates together so there is no voltage leak and I drilled a hole for the spring cup it worked out great and saved an otherwise junk chassis.
Clyde-0-Mite


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## Pomfish (Oct 25, 2003)

If you want to slow down the AFX Non-Mag chassis, try a Super II gear.
They are 19 tooth and after sanding the gear boss for proper gear mesh, they work quite well. Less top end but more torque up off the corners.
This added with swapping the armature for a 17 ohm tjet arm and she will be a nice driver.
Try It!
HTH

Keith


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## tjetsgrig (Nov 1, 2009)

Pomfish said:


> If you want to slow down the AFX Non-Mag chassis, try a Super II gear.
> They are 19 tooth and after sanding the gear boss for proper gear mesh, they work quite well. Less top end but more torque up off the corners.
> This added with swapping the armature for a 17 ohm tjet arm and she will be a nice driver.
> Try It!
> ...


This is an excellent mod! Makes them very driveable on twisty tracks!


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## AfxToo (Aug 29, 2003)

The real A/FX is probably my favorite chassis of all time. It's the ultimate evolution of the TJet that maintains its roots firmly planted where Gravity intended them to be. The Super II is technically a real A/FX also, but I never warmed up to the dorky weights and shoes with whiskers. The QuadraLam is very sweet, even sweeter when it's unencumbered by gobs of chrome plated lead. I parted out my Super IIs and put the QLs in my favorite A/FX chassis. 

The real A/FX is what brought me back from the brink of abandoning Aurora for Tyco and the TycoPro. The TycoPro looked like a real race car, was a bit squirrely to drive, but definitely felt more modern and race oriented and with some awesome looking bodies that were interesting to me instead of my father or grandfather. The Tjet seemed so ancient by the late 60s, like a quaint relic from a bygone era of model trains where all they had to do was go around a small track at at fixed speed for scenery. I never could figure out why the TJet was so over designed, with 5 gears where only 2 were really needed. The ill fitting and distorted dimensions of many old TJet bodies just didn't cut it. If I can see the posts - like on the Cheetah, grab the air sickness bag. The Wild Ones and then the Tuff Ones made big promises in the flashy Aurora ads, but on the track they didn't deliver on the promise. 

Then came the A/FX. While it was not a radical departure, it had bodies on par with Tyco, real racing tires, low center of mass, very decent handling, cool running, and lower maintenance requirements than the TJet and Tyco. The day I bought my first A/FX, a blue and orange Porsche 917, was the last day I ever considered buying a TJet ever again. 

When the magnatraction came out one of the "slow" kids in the neighborhood got one and we'd let him race it against our A/FX cars. But for us, a car that could stick to a sideways piece of track was just plain deviant and unworthy or real racing. Seeing TV commercials with cars climbing vertical walls was about as bad as it could get. That made slot cars look like toys instead of the real race cars that we'd grown to know and love.

Needless to say, 20 years later when I bought my first magnatraction and then G-Plus cars and Tycos 440s and Tomy Super G+ cars I'd come to appreciate all teh variations. Hey, maybe I'm the "slow" kid now. And I've returned to loving TJets too ... well, to some degree. But the Real A/FX is still the best ever.


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## tjetsgrig (Nov 1, 2009)

AfxToo said:


> But the Real A/FX is still the best ever.


Very well stated! By the real A/FX, I'm assuming you mean the Non Mag chassis? I would have to agree! I remember bringing home my first A/FX from the hobby shop, I had a crate full of Tjets and this thing just blew me away!! It took some getting used to, but after a while it was a blast to drive! Then I had to wait for the other guys to save up their paper route money to buy one and compete. We still raced the Tjets until everyone was up to speed ( pardon the pun ) with the new A/FX chassis!


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## AfxToo (Aug 29, 2003)

I hesitate to refer to the real A/FX as the "non mag" because it was never intended to be known by a moniker that says what it isn't. You could as easily call it the "non G-Plus." 

I think what happend is that the A/FX was originally intending to refer only to that first "Aurora/Factory Experimental" model, with the modified TJet style chassis and snap-on body. The A/FX moniker caught on well and was so readily identifiable with the "newer and more exciting" generation of products from Aurora that it became the single umbrella brand name for the entire Aurora slot car product line. Dropping the slash from the A/FX and making it simply AFX probably signified the transition point to AFX as a _brand name_ rather than a _model designation_. 

The A/FX Magnatraction was a variation on the A/FX and it should be referred to as the "A/FX Magnatraction" - because that's what it is. You wouldn't call it by anything with "non" in the name, like A/FX Non-Gravity. Maybe the geniuses at Aurora should have called it the A/FXM or A/FM. But since "X" has been designated as the official "cool letter" in the English language they had to stay with a winning designation and simply added on to it.

In my mind, there will only ever be one "A/FX car." All the others are simply Aurora or Tomy cars that are using AFX as a brand name because someone at Aurora decided long ago that AFX was cool and boosted sales. Or maybe back then it was "groovy" or "right on."


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## vaBcHRog (Feb 19, 2003)

Anyone ever get a 9T pinion on an AFX?

Roger Corrie


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## grungerockjeepe (Jan 8, 2007)

I love the original AFX. Between a handful of those and some ratty T-jets, these are the cars I raced as a kid. The AFX took the detail even further but added attractive colors, better proportions and stance, sweet torq thrust mags, roadworthy tires and more power. Ive always appreciated what the t-jet did for the hobby but the teeny tiny proportions, limited range of bodystyles and the fact that these were on their way out before I was even born just dont do it for me. 

Fact is, the AFX takes everything good about the T-jet, and builds upon it till its better in every way. The only real advantage the T-jet has is its popularity which means that parts and support for it are more plentiful.

When it comes to original aurora cars, I prefer the AFX over the MT. Unless its a particularly unique or rare car in my collection where I want the correct chassis, I usually trade out the MT chassis for AFX then sell the MTs on ebay by themselves or under the aurora bodies Im selling. What with my sizeable collection of AW XTs having a lot of MTs seems a bit redundant.


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## tjetsgrig (Nov 1, 2009)

AfxToo said:


> I hesitate to refer to the real A/FX as the "non mag" because it was never intended to be known by a moniker that says what it isn't. You could as easily call it the "non G-Plus."



Right, I called it what it was back then, A/FX, as the Mag Trac did not exist. But today, that's how people differentiate between the two. When the Mag Trac came out, that's what we called it and the original was always the A/FX.


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## AfxToo (Aug 29, 2003)

We called A/FX cars "AFXs" and A/FX Magnatractions "magnatractions." 

When the Super Magnatractions came out we didn't start calling the original Magnatractions "Non Supers."

I know, all silly and esoteric word games. I'm just pleased to know that there are other folks out there who appreciate the A/FX for what it was - the ultimate evolution of the gravity traction TJet.

My theory about the split between people who are primarily attracted to TJets versus those who are primarily attracted to A/FXs is along the lines of those who grew up collecting Matchbox cars versus those who loved Hot Wheels cars. I'd say that Matchbox people tended to gravitate to TJets while Hot Wheels people found A/FXs more to their liking. 

I was a Hot Wheels junkie, with lots of track and countless hours devoted to drag racing my cars against those of my friends. But I had friends with Matchbox collections and once in a while we'd break them all out and create very elaborate 'Matchbox Cities" on the side of a sloped hill, with ad hoc dioramas sculpted from whatever building materials we could drum up on the spot, like dirt, sand, stones, and twigs. We'd create roads, camp sites, even little cul de sacs in the side of the hill. Some of these creations were very cool (to us) and would consume the better part of all available sunlight to build up and stage all the Matchbox cars, trucks, and machinery on the city. I even recall doing a drive-in movie park. I enjoyed doing this but would rather be racing Hot Wheels, and sometimes Matchbox City would have a big orange Hot Wheels dragstrip making its way down the middle of the same slope. 

My first TJet slot car set had the slimline Formula cars and banked corners and I really took a liking to those. But they were slow. I continued to add to my Hot Wheels collection even after I got my first TJet set. I had high hopes for the Wild Ones with the foam slicks and slightly more potent performance. They were disappointing because the tires fell off after a few laps. But then I discovered the AJs rack at the hobby shop. The aluminum replacement wheels with glued and trued sponge tires with mag inserts were the bomb. I built up a white Camaro with blue stripes, added a pan, shimmed the magnets, added cooling holes to the chassis, and hogged out the wheel wells to stuff the big AJs underneath. That was what I considered to be a real race car, and one is one of the few that I do not still have.

Then the Tuff Ones came out. The ads were impressive with big slicks on parade. The cars were not. They were very skittish, ran very hot, and still had tiny wheels and tires. I wanted a factory stock race car. Then I got a couple of TycoPros for Christmas, the original black bottom fixed pan variety. Porsche 908 short nose and Chaparral 2E. Still have both. These seemed like real race cars, overpowered, brutal acceleration, and requiring a ton of finesse to keep on the track. But they looked, felt, and smelled like racing machines and the wheels and tires rocked. The fact that they were the same size as Hot Wheels impressed the heck out of me. These were going to be my Hot Wheels replacements - or so I thought.

The A/FX finally delivered on the promise that Aurora started with the Wild Ones and Tuff Ones. While evolutionary, it had all the right pieces at the right time and at the right price. The A/FX ended my Hot Wheels fascination. In retrospect, had Aurora brought the revolutionary and amazing G-Plus to market sooner they probably would have buried Tyco once and for all, at least from a technical perspective. i don't know any of the particulars, but starting with the A/FX and leading to the G-Plus, Aurora had all the technology and product appeal to crush any competition. The fact that Aurora managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory will remain as one of Slot Car History's biggest mysteries.

The current line of AFX cars, especially the Super G-Plus and Mega G, and aftermarket cars like the BSRT G3 can all trace their DNA back to the magnificent G-Plus. While TJet evolution stopped at the A/FX, the G-Plus blood line continues to evolve. In many ways the Aurora G-Plus is probably the single most significant "mass produced" HO slot car chassis in history.


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## noddaz (Aug 6, 1999)

*Roger has a thought...*



vaBcHRog said:


> Anyone ever get a 9T pinion on an AFX?
> 
> Roger Corrie


It's not like I have Super II crown gears laying around.
Now, how to do it? Press the shaft through both gears and you have nothing to hold the gear cluster to the gear plate. Press the cluster shaft into the plate and it will not turn. I understand that back in the day tuners used to use a very small machine screw to hold the cluster gear to the plate.
Of course then you have the problem of locking the two gears together to form the 9 tooth cluster. Black Max? Solder? hmmm...
One night I just may have to gut a few AW cars and try this...:tongue:


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## tortilla flat (Jan 25, 2010)

Hello, Iam new to the ho racing scene, I'm putting together a door track and interested in running non mag cars. I now have super g plus there fun but alittle to fast fast for the track. If someone could lead me in the direction to purchasing some afx non mag cars I would appreicate it. Tim


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## desototjets (Apr 25, 2008)

Tim, Try epay or an adjustable power supply and turn the voltage down.


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## SCJ (Jul 15, 1999)

AfxToo said:


> I hesitate to refer to the real A/FX as the "non mag" because it was never intended to be known by a moniker that says what it isn't. You could as easily call it the "non G-Plus."
> 
> I think what happend is that the A/FX was originally intending to refer only to that first "Aurora/Factory Experimental" model, with the modified TJet style chassis and snap-on body. The A/FX moniker caught on well and was so readily identifiable with the "newer and more exciting" generation of products from Aurora that it became the single umbrella brand name for the entire Aurora slot car product line. Dropping the slash from the A/FX and making it simply AFX probably signified the transition point to AFX as a _brand name_ rather than a _model designation_.
> 
> ...


AFXtoo, you nailed it....:thumbsup:

This is one of my pet peeves as well....there couldn't be a Non-Mag until someone decided to make a Mag, which came after the Non-Mag therefore Non-Mag couldn't have existed......it's the old Chicken or the Egg conundrum I know, but it's called a "Stock AFX chassis". 


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www.SlotCarJohnnies.com


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## twolff (May 11, 2007)

Isn't a NOS AFX chassis harder to come by than a NOS T-Jet?


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## SCJ (Jul 15, 1999)

NOS, Yes......

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www.SlotCarJohnnies.com


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## rideinstile (Dec 26, 2007)

just introduced my kids to one today, they compared it to a T-Jet and a magna traction and they really liked the A/FX. It's faster, smoother, you still have to "drive" the car, they really liked it. Unfortunately I only have one (that a friend gave me) I'm going to have to go out and find some more. :wave:


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## WooffWooff (Dec 23, 2009)

rideinstile said:


> just introduced my kids to one today, they compared it to a T-Jet and a magna traction and they really liked the A/FX. It's faster, smoother, you still have to "drive" the car, they really liked it. Unfortunately I only have one (that a friend gave me) I'm going to have to go out and find some more. :wave:


many years ago we would buy complete NOS AFX chassis from "Auto World" for $7. We'd take out the "mean green" arm they had in'em, and use the pickup-shoes on the AFX/MagnaTractions we were race'n at the time. I don't know if NOS AFX chassis are still available, but used ones are "out there" and they would still be fine in most cases. Very fast with stock AFX or AFX/MT arms, stock magnets, thunder brushes, brass fronts and silicone tires. Once "dialed-in", they are relatively maintence free (compared to AFX/MT and T-jets which is the only slots have used on a regular basis). Aurora T-jets are the only thing we race now, but each of us have one AFX RTR just in-case. After all, they are the highest form of HO non-magnet race'n. You just need to be young enough 'ya don't get dizzy watch'n'em go-round.


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