A Different Kind of Tension: T-Jet Shop Work Leads To Early “Spring Fever”

One of the more difficult parts to source for old Thunderjets is the tiny springs for the pick-up shoes. These are often missing on old neglected cars, as the pick up shoes are often the parts that fall off when the cars get thrown into storage bins and such, and once the pick-up shoes fall off, the springs are gone! While you can occasionally find springs for sale from online vendors, I have found that the supply is often intermittent and the quality varies radically.

Some time ago I bought a large number of these springs from a vendor whose wares I’m usually very happy with. Not so much this time; although they were the right size, and they were well packaged, being delivered strung on a piece of 22 ga electrical wire, the springs had too much tension in them. They worked fine for the largest, heaviest cars in The Road Crew, but on the smaller, lighter, short wheelbase cars, they prevent the front end from sitting correctly. This not only looks wrong, but also causes performance problems; obviously you want your slot car as deep into the slot as it can be to hold on though the turns, and if the front end is lifted and bouncing around, the lack of stability will lead to easier de-slotting. And of course, you don’t want your springs to be too weak, either; that causes poor contact between the pick-up shoes and the rail, and again leads to performance problems. So, finding the right replacement springs for the car you are putting together can actually be quite challenging.

Last weekend I worked to remedy a car with this problem, namely my black ’63 Falcon hardtop, and it turned into quite a project, as 2 other cars got dragged into it while I experimented with different springs, spring tensions, and swapped them between cars for optimal results. You can probably guess how much fun it can be working on something this small that, my nature, loves to pop out of your hands and bounce around your workbench until it disappears into the hinterlands never to be seen again. Well, I’ve developed a few tricks to deal with that over the years! One thing I recommend is using a hook tool to both remove and install the springs; I’ve found this to be the best way to handle these. Tweezers work too, of course, but beware: using tweezers will sometimes result in that dreaded “pop” of your spring escaping and vanishing forever! I’ve also found it helpful to put a tiny dot of dielectric grease on the pad of the chassis to hold the spring in place while you install the pick-up shoe.

^{_{A clumsy fix when nothing else will work: crushing the springs with needlenose pliers to reduce the tension.}}

There are some ways to take tension out of coil springs; heating is one, cutting a coil off is another. Unfortunately neither solution really works with springs this tiny. About the only solution I’ve found is a poor one: crushing the spring in a pair of pliers. This does shorten it, but it also mangles it; sometimes I can get away with it, but if I’m too aggressive it just turns the spring into a pile of useless copper, so while crushing the springs has worked at times in the past, it’s a clumsy solution that I don’t recommend unless there are no other options.

So, are there other options? Well, I recently bought another set from a different vendor which worked much better, as they were “softer” and with less tension. Oddly enough these were sold as being for AFX cars, and since the AFX cars are significantly bigger and heavier I figured they, too, would be too strong, but it turns out they were about perfect. What wasn’t perfect was the way they were packaged, laid out on a card trapped under a piece of cellophane. They presented great online, but freeing them from that packaging was a pain, as I had to cut them out with an X-acto knife and then very carefully remove the remaining bits of tape and paper from them while praying NOT to drop them!

I recommend storing your unused springs by feeding them over a 22 gauge wire as shown in these pics and video, as this is a great way to keep them without them either winding together-where you risk damage unwinding them-or getting lost.

Another thing you can default to is the readily available Auto World springs. I always have some of these around for my Ultra G fleets. As you can imagine these also tend to have a bit more tension than is ideal for the smaller original cars, but they will work pretty well on an Aurora chassis for some of the larger heavier long-wheelbase bodies.

Of course, as with many things in this hobby, you might want to get them while they last! As I’ve observed recently, good things seem to be disappearing, so those of you with large collections like mine might want to stock up while the getting is good!