Flamethrower Chassis
Red Ford GT
Autoworld/Round 2 has released their new X-Traction cars. Release 4 is the new Flamethrower chassis. The flamethrower chassis is a slot car chassis that has a small light under the front of the car that creates the appearance of headlights when the car is driven.
There are 6 different bodies, each with two colors, in this release, and I have one of the prettiest available in this review, the Ford GT, in a great looking Red.
The body is a good match to the original car. The car is modeled after the famed 1960's Ford Gt40s.
This is one of the most beautiful cars ever made and the Autoworld version conveys that very nicely. The car's stance is very good and although it doesn't have every last detail of the real car still looks very good.
Overall, this is a very good body, the center of gravity is very low, which helps with the handling of the car. Its overall shape is a good match to the real car, and especially in this red color really looks great.
The chassis is basically an X-Traction chassis, but modifications have been made to account for the lights being wired into the front. The X-traction chassis is a modern reproduction of the AFX magnatraction chassis that was first introduced in 1974 or 1975 and was the last dominate pancake motor chassis in HO scale slot cars. Now this is not a magnet chassis in the modern sense, but it does use the motor magnets to assist in holding the car down to the track. This is an improvement over the thunderjet chassis which does not use magnets to hold the cars on the track, but it doesn't compare to today's modern cars. What does that mean for this car, it means you must slow down to go through a corner. Much like the thunderjet, it also allows the car's rear end to slide out like a real car's might do when it fishtails or power slides. This adds a great element of realism once you have learned to master that driving technique.
This chassis has always been a good chassis. It runs very smoothly at all speeds and is even faster down a straight-away than the original AFX. The pickup shoes are wide and create a very good contact patch with the rails thus transferring electricity very effectively. The tires are very good for stock tires, they are fairly sticky and allow for great racing right out of the box.
Now I'm not sold on all of the changes they have made. The most obvious is that the springs are gone and have been replaced with the narrow copper tabs. These tabs allow for the lights to be soldered tot he electrical system and also provide the tension against the pick-up shoes. The tabs make it hard to adjust the tension on the shoes and can create some that are soft and can come off the rail, causing loss of power, and others that are too hard and can cause hopping of the front end, especially over joints in the track. Secondly, they have made a place for a traction magnet to go near the right rear wheel. While this will allow them to make a pretty interesting chassis down the road, it does cause the rear wheels to be slightly wider than normal on some of the models I've seen. This shouldn't cause a problem while running the cars but does cause a slight appearance problem while they are being displayed.
There are only two problems with this car. The first has been a problem with lighted cars for over 30 years, and does not effect the performance of the cars. The light gets its power from the track the same as the motor does, therefore unless you are going full speed the lights are never fully lit, and are therefore never shining as brightly as they can. As you drive this car or any car with lights, it is bright enough to see the car when the room is darkened, but not bright enough to light the track ahead of the car.
The second problem is a little more severe. As you can see from the picture the body doesn't sit correctly on the chassis. The body ends up with the drivers side rear not having enough tire showing. This is not the only time I have seen this on the flamethrower versions of these cars so they must have an off center die somewhere in manufacturing. Hopefully they can find it and replace the molds.
In Summary Autoworld has done a good job representing one of the best sports cars ever manufactured. Is the car perfect, no but it looks really good.
The chassis is nice and smooth and allows for a lot of fun on both tight twisty tracks and long fast tracks. The headlights aren't perfect, but they are as good as any HO scale car ever has been. And they add that little bit of realism to the car as it is driven without too much of a sacrifice to the overall function of the chassis. And don't forget it lets the kids race those day/night races with the basement lights turned off, and simulate those long sports car races like Daytona and LeMans.
Autoworld makes this model in both Red and Blue, and I can't wait to add them both to my collection of cars.
Thanks to Autoworld Slot Cars for the car to review.
MikeG
