Here is the second part of the saga of the Atlas Jaguar. I knew the motor was good! It ran instantly when given the battery test, and after some cleaning and oiling, including brushing the pick up shoes with some Tarn-X and sanding them with 800-grit Wetordry, I put it all back together and put it on the track. And it ran great-for a few inches. Then it stopped suddenly and when I picked it up found it was hot, so I knew it was picking up current! Something was jammed. So I took it apart, but nothing seemed wrong, and it ran fine again when touched to power. So I put it back together again and the same thing happened. What could the problem be?
It didn’t take too long to figure out that the worm gear was binding against the ring gear and locking up. I could not figure out why, though; both the gears were in fine shape without any bent or chipped teeth. Was the alignment off? The ring gear slid easily from side to side-too easily, I thought-but since its anchored in a recess in the chassis there was very little free play. And yet it kept happening; it ran fine suspended in the air, but the moment the wheels touched the track and put torque on the axle, the worm and wheel jammed. This situation pointed out the first weakness I found with the Atlas design: because the rear axle is covered from underneath, there was no way to free the gears when they bound up; I had to take the body off the chassis every time! Well, this wouldn’t do! I messed with it for hours, spending a whole evening trying everything I could think of; I reversed the axle gear, soaked everything in the best oil, even bent the brackets that anchored the motor downward a hit hoping that some extra downforce on the motor might prevent it from raising slightly, since I wondered if some longitudinal freeplay was causing the gears to bind. Nothing I tried worked, and I went to bed that night in disappointment.
Over the next few days I tried something else that yielded interesting results: the position of the guide pin and the rear locator pin sure looked like they would line up perfectly with the screw holes on a Thunderjet chassis. So just for fun, I tried one; I took a brand new AW “Ultra G” out of the package and sure enough the screw holes lined up perfectly! Just to see how it would look, I pulled the guide pin and the rear pin out and used two T-Jet screws to anchor the T-Jet chassis on. The front post was too short, but after cutting a tiny piece of styrene tubing to lengthen it, it fit perfectly! I fitted this chassis with a set of great looking Vincent wheels (the second set of “Minilites” I bought a while ago) and even ran it around the big track. It worked great; I would have had to do some grinding on the underside of the front bumper to get the pickup shoes to compress all the way, but this was definitely a viable option if I decided I wanted to use the body this way and add it to my numbered racing fleet!
Still, there was something about this that dissatisfied me; it wasn’t a bad idea, but it wasn’t right: I wanted to make it work in its stock form. So, stuck for other ideas, I decided to buy a parts car.
This, it turned out, was a bad decision: as I mentioned in Part 1 of this post, Atlas slot cars are extremely expensive, and after several days of watching, the only one that came up for sale with a “Zinger” chassis at a price I was willing to pay was a very distressed gray Porsche 904 that had been fitted with a set of AFX wheels (that should have been a warning sign, but remember, I’ve never owned one of these before!) The car had that “stepped on” roof damage that so many abused vintage slot cars seem to have, but even with all that, I had to bid on it, and the damn thing still cost me $50! I got it, though, and the moment it arrived, I confirmed the motor’s viability with a battery test and then took it apart to see what I could get out of it.
Interestingly, the worm gear on this one was yellow and the axle gear was brown, as opposed to the ones on the Jag, which were both red. I’m still not sure what that difference means, if it means anything. I also noticed the front axle cover was missing, but since the motor ran I figured I could save it…until I took it apart. As the AFX wheels indicated, the rear axle was non-stock and too long for the car, but in order to fit those AFX wheels, a previous owner used an axle that was not only longer than stock but thicker as well, and had enlarged the axle holes and the hole in the axle gear to fit it! 🙁 Well, that made it unlikely I was going to be able to use it at all! Even so, I still tried; the rear axle from the Jaguar just wobbled around inside those enlarged axle holes, so I took the axle the parts car came with and clipped it down and filed it to match the stock length. That seemed like it would work, until I encountered the next problem: because of the design of the chassis, its difficult to slide the rear axle through those little locator blocks while keeping the axle gear anchored in the chassis recess in order to push the axle through the gear and out the other side. While doing so, the chassis, which was extremely brittle, broke in my hands: one of the axle locator blocks snapped off, giving it the ghost right there!
So there went $50! I had a working spare motor now, but nothing else I could use! And yet, I still think it was worth it, because for some reason this experience turned on a light in my head that hadn’t switched on before: what if the problem with the gears jamming on the original chassis wasn’t due to the the motor or the gears, but the axle itself? It seemed loose inside the locator blocks; what would happen if I replaced it with a new one?
I used one of the shortened T-Jet axles I buy in bulk from Slot Car Central in New York (which I’m almost sure are resold from Road Race Replicas) and tried to fit it into the Atlas chassis, but it was too thick; I was able to push it through the locator blocks-barely-but I could not fit it through the original red axle gear. Of course, it would fit through the brown axle gear from the parts car since someone had drilled that out, but although I could probably have used that, I had another idea: I remembered I had a new SCC axle that, due to a manufacturing defect, was thinner than all the others; so much so that I couldn’t use it on a T-Jet chassis; I had tried, but the ring gear just spun on the axle. I managed to find that flawed axle, and wouldn’t you know, it was a hair thicker than the axle that the car came with, but thinner than a standard T-Jet axle. It was snug, but not too tight to slide through the locator blocks and through the red axle gear: it was a perfect fit! I put the original motor back in, put the tires on, took the Jaguar body off the Ultra G chassis and replaced the screws with the original pins, reassembled the car exactly as I had received it save for that replaced rear axle, aaaaand….VO-EEE-LA! Problem solved! I put it on the track and it ran perfectly! No more gear jamming!
Too bad I didn’t figure that out before spending $50 on a parts car, but you know what they say about making omelets! The now broken parts car chassis, with its working motor and a standard-thickness SCC T-Jet axle to hold the ring gear in place, is now part of the diorama, but other than a parts source for any future Atlas cars that may come my way, its worthless. And the body that came on it is equally worthless; not only is it damaged, but its ugly besides.
And now its running right, it is fast, just like I thought it would be! It doesn’t handle all that well, but its still fun to run around my old Model Motoring track, where it looks right at home rubbing fenders with all my vintage Aurora T-Jets!
So, this experience has taught me a couple of key points about Atlas slot cars:
- Although the worm gear drive design looks good, its flaw is that if it binds up, it can’t be released without disassembling the car, and it seems obvious to me that this must happen fairly often; the car I bought was in good condition, but still had enough wear that the rear axle had wallowed out the axle holes enough to introduce enough free play in the “float” of the axle that the drive gear bound up against it.
- The chassis pan is extremely fragile and easily broken; the axle locators are easy to snap off, and once done, it seems like it would be almost impossible to repair them. Not only that, but the anchor points for the front of the pickup shoes are also easily broken, and these, too, seem like they would be impossible to repair. On that latter point, you could say the same about the T-Jet, except that they are made of thicker, less brittle plastic, and I’ve never had one break! This means that taking an Atlas chassis apart for repair or modification requires extreme care, and even with that, you are likely to have a mishap!
So, would I ever buy another one? Well, I never say never, but it seems evident to me that the Atlas design is inferior to the Thunderjet; it may be fast, but its problems with serviceability and the prices they get on the collector market equal a pain not worth having. So, no; probably not. Even so, it was a cool new experience to have, and made for a few days of fun and interesting tinkering. That alone was worth the price of admission this time around!
You have a great investigative nature Bud. Wow, this has been an amazing store but impressive how you worked through all of this. I can totally understand these unusual problems that come up and not being able to rest until a satisfying result is achieved! Sounds like these are some important lessons learned and valuable information for the future. I love that you used the old one as part of the diorama!