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| The following advice
are ment for the slotracing beginner who wants to set up his 20+Years old track again and
not for the diehard slotracing champ looking for tuning tips and tricks. so keep this in
mind when reading the below. the
maintenance of afx cars is rather easy if you know what has to be done with your car and
even more important when something has to be done. at first you should get to know the
parts of your car and the proper names. |
you can see the
parts of a typical afx chassis on the explosion drawing below.
(click on the pix to enlarge them )it is important to know the names when looking for spare parts and also
when talking to the "pros".
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 ok !, you reached the point where you sat
up this old h0 track and now the damn car just donīt want to run ?
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| AFX Car troubleshooting ! 
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 | remove all parts from your chassis
according to the drawing above (watch for those really small parts like pickup
spring etc. clean all parts carefully with denaturated alcohol. |
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| carefully remove any hair and other
things like that from the axles and other parts. remove the black dust from the commutator
brushes and from the underside of the armature collector. Try to remove any dirt and any
rests of old oil from the gears and gearplate. The gears should spin freely and should not
stick together due to large amounts of old oil and dust. |
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| after careful cleaning put the
chassis back together and do a test run to see if the motor runs as it is supposed to. if
the motor runs well leave out the next paragraph. |
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| if the motor doesnīt run there
maybe these solutions to the problem |
- the pickup shoes are in such a bad shape that they need to be replaced.
- the pickup springs do not sit in
their correct position and must be adjusted.
- the commutator brushes are used up,
damaged, covered with layers of dust or they are not in the right place. another thing may
be that the commutator brush springs do not supply the right pressure on the brushes.
Adjust them carefully
- the armature winding may be damaged
and must be replaced.
- There may be old oil on the brushes
or the armature collector, clean
them very good.
- Make sure all parts of the chassis
are in the right place and you have no leftovers.
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| if the motor runs but the car does
not run well these may be your problems: |
- the pickup shoes are used up and
slow the car down considerably (replace them).
- the tires are in bad shape (too dry
and hard from the years in the attic).
the tires must be soft and should give good grip for your car so replace very old ones and
tires still in decent shape can be run over poster strips to get the dirt off them and to
restore some grip.
- the motor magnets lost some of
their magnetism power (due to age) and therefore are no longer able to pull the car tight
enough to the track. this may be the reason for the tires to spin through. if that is the
case with your car look for better magnets.
- the track is too dirty and needs to
be cleaned (use lighter fuel for the plastic part and very fine sandpaper for the metal
parts).
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| carefully oil the car as pictured
in the drawing. Do not oil too much and never oil the armature or commutator brushes. A
good oil for this purpose is sewing machine oil . |
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Use the pic on the
left as a reference for cleaning and proper oiling of the cars (click on pic to enlarge) by following these steps you should get any
afx car running again in no time. good luck ! |
for spare parts and links as well
as some pix click on the buttons below.
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