I have just completed a weekend experiment with a new chassis that I finally acquired last week after first seeing them about 2.5 years ago. Today’s post is my assessment of that test run.
In the past, I have tried – and blogged about – a couple of other chassis designs from other companies that were made to be compatible with the Thunderjet format. These include the Dash Motorsports version of the TJet as well as well as completely new designs from JAG Hobbies, the TR3 and the newer DK-4.
All of these products are excellent in their way and it’s great that there are people out there designing and building new things for this hobby. For me personally, only the Dash Motorsports version of the T-Jet has met my specific needs, as I run this chassis under some of the MEV bodies in The Road Crew. For the racing fleets, only the Auto World Ultra-G was economical enough to build a fleet of hundreds of cars with, and considering that the newer and readily available version has the traction magnet, and that was what I got used to at the outset, the idea of going back and redoing my whole fleet with a different chassis just wasn’t in the cards. This has led to some of these other experiments being interesting one-offs, but never part of my overall racing lineup. This being my experience at this point, I went into this purchase of the Bauer UL expecting much the same, but at this early stage, I think this one may have more promise for my own use than some of the others!
One of the frustrating things about Bauer slot cars is the lack of coherent information available about them. Case in Point: when I go looking for Bauer cars online, I’ve seen that over the years different models have utilized different chassis platforms. Some of them run on the original Aurora Thunderjet chassis, which is interesting, because the only way that I can see that they’ve been able to do that is by getting ahold of large quantities of NOS chassis to build their cars. Others are mounted on the modern Auto World Ultra-G, the platform I utilize most extensively, and which was the original core subject of this blog. Other Bauer bodies appear to be mounted on AFX chassis, and I’ve even seen some that looked like they’re mounted on Tyco chassis.
The difference between these is significant because of the slight difference in size between the original T-Jet and Ultra-G formats. The beautifully crafted and customized Bauer bodies understandably have extremely tight tolerances, and are not likely to be candidates for the kinds of adjustments I’ve discussed so extensively on this blog. Who wants to take a Dremmel and start grinding away plastic on something that cost so much money?
The problem is that there doesn’t seem to be any type of chart or listing that shows which Bauer bodies were made for which formats. I recently made a purchase from a vendor in New Jersey who has a large number of Bauer slot cars for sale, and sent him an email trying to get some clarification on these questions, but that communication appears to have died out before it even started. As a result, I again find myself in the wilderness, trying to figure this all out on my own. Nothing new: I’ve been doing that since I got into this hobby and I’m used to it, but you can understand that it’s one thing to experiment with a $35 Auto World body or a $60 Aurora body, but quite another to do the same with a $250 Bauer. Therefore, I am proceeding with extreme caution.
These investigations have led me to the “Ultra Low,” or “UL” chassis design, introduced by Bauer sometime around November 2023 and built under the name B4Slot, the logo of Burn4Slotracing GmbH, which I understand took over from Motordrom, another German firm, in January of that same year. The relationship between B4 Slot and Bauer is a little fuzzy to me, but perhaps these details are unimportant where the rubber meets the road.
So you probably already know this, but like most modern day slot chassis, this is a can motor design, in the idea is a low center of gravity, combined with a very flat form factor making it possible for Bauer or theoretically other companies to put interiors in their slot cars: something that would dramatically increase the enjoyment of these cars to collectors like me who grew up on high-quality diecasts with full interiors!
Right out of the gate there’s a disadvantage in comparison to the original T-Jet in that the wheelbase is not adjustable. Bauer has anticipated this and made the chassis in four different formats. There is a short and long wheelbase version matching the original aurora T-Jet. There is an indication of an Auto World short and long wheelbase as well, showing that Bauer was proactively thinking ahead and taking Auto World owners into consideration, although I have to say that up to this point I have yet to see any of these AW formats for sale. Whether that’s because the vendors that I buy from just aren’t carrying them, or because they are planned but have not yet been put into production, is a question I cannot conclusively answer at this time.
Since the majority of bodies use a long wheelbase, that’s the format I bought, and throughout the weekend I attempted to fit it to several different bodies from several different manufacturers in my collection and found that it fit most of them very well. There were exceptions: the most disappointing one was my favorite HO slot body, the Road Race Replicas ‘65 Mustang fastback; the resistor at the front of the chassis would not clear the screw post on that design. I also tried it on a couple of the Faller bodies I have, and that, sadly, did not work out either. But all The Aurora and Model Motoring bodies I tried worked fine, and even a couple of the newer JL/AW bodies appeared to line up and mount pretty well.
One complaint that I have with the design is that the installation of the guide pin was difficult: I would like to see the chassis cut with a deeper better-defined slot at the front to hold the traditional T-Jet style guide pin surface. I was able to get it to work, but the pin wanted to slide around a lot without cranking down harder on the front screw than I was comfortable with. The new Auto World combo screw/pin introduced in 2023 seemed to work significantly better.
My first runs were extremely positive as I discovered that, with the resistor upfront, the chassis is nowhere near as fast as some of the other can motor variations I’ve tried, which is a good thing! The motor runs at a speed and power level commensurate with the original Auroras, which makes them highly compatible with the original chassis. This was a delightful discovery, especially after trying the JAG Hobbies DK4, which was unusably fast!
On the negative side, I see a potential problem with fitting custom wheels or tires to one of these chassis. I attempted to fit a set of original Aurora tires on the stock wheels it came with with; the original tires are slightly taller in diameter than the high-quality tires that the chassis came with, and discovered that after having done so, the pick up shoes no longer made good enough contact with the rails to keep the car running reliably. I could get it to work sometimes, but as soon as it hit a low spot, it cut out. Restoring the stock Bauer tires resolved this problem.
Considering that the Bauer tires are far superior to the original tires in every way, you would think this wouldn’t be much of a complaint…but what happens when you try to fit a set of Vincent or Road Race Replicas wheels and tires to this chassis? I haven’t tried that yet, but if simply changing the tires produced the results that I saw, I suspect that there are some troubles on the horizon there. Some of this may be overcome by making tweaks and adjustments to the depth of the pickup shoes, either by bending them slightly or by installing taller or stronger springs. I’ll be experimenting with some of these tricks in the future.
Right now, I only have one of these chassis, but I will soon be buying another one, one of the short wheelbase versions, so I could try that out on some of the smaller bodies and see the results. Thus, so a part two of this post is definitely coming.
For now, I come back to the issue of the Bauer slot cars themselves and wondering how viable it is to add some of these to my collection. I don’t think there’s any question that they would work fine with The Road Crew and would run around happily on the Model Motoring track with my Aurora originals and Dash Motorsports customs. What is still unresolved is whether there is any chance of adding any Bauer bodies to my Ultra-G fleet. Just because they appear to be making this new chassis to match the wheelbase of the Auto World reboot does not necessarily mean that they will be making entire cars to that specification. I know there are a small handful of them; I bought one a couple of years ago. Yet, due to the lack of guidance on which Bauer cars are made for which platforms, I am simply going to experiment with what I find and see what works. That’s liable to get expensive, so that means it will happen slowly.
So, in conclusion…
Is it cool? Yes. Is it “awesome?” Not quite; there are limitations. But it does show the promise of compatibility with the original cars in ways some of the other chassis have not. Would I buy another? Absolutely, and as I mentioned above, I plan to, and when I do there will be a follow up to this post showing what more I learned and what more I can do with it. I’m also going to be looking more aggressively for the “AW short” and “AW long” models to see what I can do with those. And I’m very enamored of the idea of a low gravity chassis clearing space for interior inserts in HO scale slot cars. That alone would make it worth the price to get used to using this platform!
All of this is fun: the experimentation, the investigation, trying out new platforms and products and new combinations, and seeing what we can create. But at the end of the day, I come to the same conclusion that I’ve come to over and over again: there’s no substitute for the original; there never has been, and I doubt there ever will be!