# Defective Armatures on JLTO ?



## AfxToo (Aug 29, 2003)

So far, both of the Bowtie Brigade slot cars that I've unpacked have armatures mounted off center on the armature shaft. One of them was totally unusable and had to be replaced. The other one is usable but nowhere close to being smooth. Does JL have yet another quality issue on their hands or did I get a couple of arms from the bottom of the barrel?

Once you wipe the excess oil they turkey basted into the bottom hole take a look at the shaft alignment on your arms. The arm shaft should be centered in the commutator. The brush wear pattern on the comm should form a circle with the arm shaft at the center. If these things are machine assembled it's likely that the entire batch is bad. 

Hello RC2 - time for a little QA visit to the land of a billion cheap workers.


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## dlw (Aug 17, 1999)

*Replacing Arms*

When you replace an armuture using a wheel press, be very careful. The arm will cave in upwards which will slow it down. you need something to relieve the pressure from the area near the armature's axle.


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## TK Solver (Mar 18, 2004)

Hopefully they can turn the boat around that's carrying the Mopars and make sure those are ok...


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## AfxToo (Aug 29, 2003)

So far - 4 out of 5 have the wobble arms.


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## 22tall (Jul 28, 2002)

Not good to hear of another defect. Is the rear axle hole still a problem?


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## 00'HO (Nov 19, 2004)

By pass the dumb s**t and dropp what good parts you have into a vintage t-jet chassis. The day when quality plus volume was the objective. Warped chassis, axles, undersized brush holes have been a norm in the JL cars. Helping our racers with the junk JL cars has been on going since their introduction. I think JL owes us for the time spent on making right what they lacked in QC!


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## AfxToo (Aug 29, 2003)

The chassis itself seems okay. The brush holes are really good. The word has definately gotten out that the brushes must be level and they are definately level. Even though one of the brush springs may be twisted a little the brushes do sit level. I think one of the brush springs is just a tiny bit too long and it ends up needing a funny twist to get the brush where it needs to be. If they fixed it the brush spring situation it would be perfect.

There's still plenty of free play in the rear axle holes but it's tolerable. 

The front wheels aren't pressed on as tightly as I like them. I try to set them up with about 1/32" free play side to side. A couple of turns with a wheel press fixes this. I also re-press any rear wheels where I can see the spline showing. Again, a couple of turns with the wheel press.

For some reason they don't seem to trim the flashing off the wheels as good as they used to. It's not a big deal to clean it up with a fingernail trimmer or an XActo.

Here's an odd thing, for some reason they are putting a lightweight oil in the bottom hole. The bottom hole is one of the areas that a small dab of the lithium grease works well, especially with the unbalanced/misaligned arms. Most of the cars I've unpacked so far have had oily brushes, which you want to avoid at all costs.

The out of balance/misaligned arm may be something that's existed for a while. If you get a lot of brush noise and a pulsating sound when the chassis runs with the idler gear out chances are your arm is off. It's very easy to detect visually. You CAN still run your car with these misaligned arms. They are usually servicable but they won't be smooth. Combining a misaligned arm with sloppy gears and oversized axle holes makes for a car that's not exactly a precision racing machine, but it's still fun to rip around the track with it. Those magnificant JL magnets make up for a world of other problems. However, if you are racing stock JL cars then make sure you sort through all of your arms and use the one that appears to be mounted on the center of the armature shaft.

I am now fully convinced that the JL tri-lam arm is no better than any Aurora 2-lam motor in the same 15-16 ohm range. JL may have thought that they were raising the performance bar a little with the extra lamination but it isn't doing a thing. If they would fix the alignment problem and then strap on a nice 6 to 8 ohm wind then we'd be talking horsepower under the gearplate. I tried regearing the one car that came with the aligned arm to standard TJet gear ratio and it runs great. Fast and smooth and more controllable. 

*If JL would put in a good lower resistance arm that was aligned and decently balanced, tighten up the tolerances on the gearing and holes, go to the TJet gear ratio, and put on silicone rear tires I truly believe they could sell "SS" versions of these same cars for an SRP of $19.95 instead of the current $14.95. I would gladly pay the extra money.
*


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## AfxToo (Aug 29, 2003)

I REALLY hate whining about these cars but JL/RC2 made some stupid mistakes with this release. Why they decided to load up the bottom end of the chassis with lightweight oil is beyond me. All of the cars that I've received have brushes that are impregnated with oil. Even after you clean them out you still get a solid oil ring on the commutator from the oil that has soaked into the brushes. I'm going to try to soak the brushes in isopropyl alcohol to get the oil out. If that doesn't work I'll have to bake it out. 

It's too bad because you can see very positive evidence of JL attempting to fix some lingering issues like warped chassis, misaligned electricals, and bad brush fit. They've made great progress in those areas but now they've slipped up with the wobbly armatures, oily brushes, and loose rear axle holes. 

Still room for improvement.


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## newbombturk (Dec 2, 2000)

*Cook the brushes!*

Grab a set of hemostats and hold the brushes and "cook" those brushes with a propane torch for 20 secs. and the brushes will be free of oil.


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## newbombturk (Dec 2, 2000)

*and so it goes....*

....and still we keep buying them....every relaese seems to be plagued with problems....and we still buy them.


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## AfxToo (Aug 29, 2003)

I'm not out to spank JL for a few quality miscues. You have a traditional diecast company jumping both feet first into a whole new line of business that involves intricate offshore assembly of tiny electromechanical parts and a somewhat discriminating customer base (to say the least). I want JL to be successful in the biggest way because they've shown so much damn promise with what they've delivered so far. They are so close and only a few steps away from being right there with a killer product in this little segment of the market. They've proven that they can be good. Now it's time to be great. I'm willing to pay a few more dollars if they can get there.


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## TX Street Racer (May 8, 2004)

AfxToo said:


> I'm not out to spank JL for a few quality miscues. You have a traditional diecast company jumping both feet first into a whole new line of business that involves intricate offshore assembly of tiny electromechanical parts and a somewhat discriminating customer base (to say the least). I want JL to be successful in the biggest way because they've shown so much damn promise with what they've delivered so far. They are so close and only a few steps away from being right there with a killer product in this little segment of the market. They've proven that they can be good. Now it's time to be great. I'm willing to pay a few more dollars if they can get there.


I totally agree.....I think that RC2/JL will eventually get the bugs worked out.At the very least we get some GREAT bodies to use on other Tjets,right?


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