# AW Flamethrowers pu shoes



## purple66bu (Dec 18, 2013)

Seems the AW flamethrowers added light pu under the shoes makes the shoes tight and want to deslot under hard acceleration. Any tricks you guys use?
Thanks Dennis


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## slotcarman12078 (Oct 3, 2008)

The older style chassis used lever type springs to not only get power to the light bulb, but also to replace the shoe springs. Gentle tweaking of that "lever" will adjust the shoes. Do it a little at a time and test drive.


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## purple66bu (Dec 18, 2013)

AW uses the lever and a spring which really makes it tight.. I'm not well versed on adjusting them but I get the idea. I did tweak that lever and it ran smooth just with no lights.


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## Bill Hall (Jan 6, 2007)

Making the pick up point for the lighting circuit a variable wiper contact and backdating pick up shoe springing technology to the stone age was a horrendous design concept. When doubling up or combining engineering tasks, they should work together and compliment each other. 

Hard to know what the heck they were thinking. This design doesnt do either task very well. 

Dont forget that you can also adjust the shoe tension at the shoe hook by gently rolling it up. This way you can leave the approach angle of the spring/contact as is. Cleanliness of the sliding contact area helps.

Good luck!


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## rholmesr (Oct 8, 2010)

You could try restricting the front of the shoe to limit the travel like what is done on Fray cars.


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## TK Solver (Mar 18, 2004)

Purp, it's doable. Keep tweaking and don't lose hope.


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## RiderZ (Feb 19, 2007)

I removed the copper tabs,replaced with conventional coil springs.Resoldered the light bulb wires the way AFX did it back in the day.


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## Dslot (Sep 2, 2007)

*Shoe-Tweak Pics*



> Bill sez:
> Dont forget that you can also adjust the shoe tension at the shoe hook by gently rolling it up. This way you can leave the approach angle of the spring/contact as is. Cleanliness of the sliding contact area helps.


Two valuable reminders there, and not just for the Flamethrower owners. Thanks, Bill. 

Back in the golden age of the HT Slot forum, when the motto was "This Thread is Useless without Pictures," *SwamperGene*, one of the most practical and down to earth of the lost HT tech heroes provided superb photos of the proper tweak for the hook of JL's shoes. I had a bit of work finding them in the archives, but I'll bet *Purple66bu* and several others will be glad to see them. Worth a thousand words and all that.

Here is *Gene's post* (which should probably be part of a Sticky). No use following up on Gene's reference to Bill Hall's video of the process, though - during the ownership changeover problems, Bill removed it and the other linked vids and the posts in his prodigiously useful Model Murdering series (but he stayed on the forum, to everyone's immense relief and gratitude). Come on Bill; can you come to the table yet? What would it take to get you to end the strike and make your unmatched contributions available to us all again? 
After all, in spite of recent rough spots,




-- and so far I haven't seen another forum that seems likely to fill the old HT's shoes. (Hope I'm not pushing too hard here.)

Back to the topic - after reading Gene's post, folks may want to check out the rest of the thread. You'll get Gene's and Bill's and Rick's and Joe's and others' commentary and elaboration on the process, and on other approaches to the problem.

-- D


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## purple66bu (Dec 18, 2013)

Thank you im learning alot thanks to all of HT


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## leonus (Dec 17, 2013)

I just got my first one of these, a trans am firebird. Has regular coil springs, and the wipers for the lights. Works ok, but weird. Will probably either remove the light, or try to rework it like original afx style. Hard to imagine why a manufacturer would choose to make something more complicated...

The really ironic thing to me is, the chassis has the plastic nubs for routing the wires the conventional way molded in...

Oh well, who knows...


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## slotcarman12078 (Oct 3, 2008)

I'm almost willing to bet they had no idea what those nubs were for, but since they were on the Aurora master that they copied, they just included it when they made the mold.


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## [email protected] (Jan 31, 2010)

PLEASE STICKY GENE'S POST!!! 

That has saved me a ton of headache now with the AW cars. :thumbsup:

http://www.hobbytalk.com/bbs1/showpost.php?p=3216875&postcount=11


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