About me: My name is Rolf Kuhn. I grew up with those Faller ams cars and, at that time, never heard about T-Jets. I came back to the hobby when I tried to get them back to run for my son when he was 4 years old. I recognized the faller cars had found collectors interest and were very expensive to race because there were only a few after market spare parts available. Then I found a BAUER model using a T-Jet chassis. I tried to find out everything aout T-Jets on the net and found HO World. That gave me tons of hints and information - thanks !

I am 48 and my son is now 11 years old. We work and race a lot together with our T-Jets and I hope this will last. I apologize for my English. Use and rewrite what you like :-)

I read this interesting article from Mark Owyang:
http://www.howorld.net/archives/howto/conversions/tj_chmod/chassmod.html
about lowering a T-Jet years ago and want to share some of my own experinces.

I think the changes are more easy if you add the electrical parts of an AFX to the T-Jet:

When you are grinding down the chassis, you do not risk your pickup springs loosing ground.

How to fix the electrical parts of an AFX to a t-jet chassis

You first have to look for an AFX and a t-jet chassis. (may as well be a long AFX "special" chassis). To strip the electrical parts of both chassis,

use a drill to remove the rivets until they fall apart. Then I use steel nails to temporarily fix the electrical parts

of the AFX to the t-jet. Pinning everything to a rubber eraser makes it easier.

Having them in place, you can mark their position

upon the chassis with a knife. This helps you to see were to grind down the parts

of the chassis that where not meant to be holding AFX parts.

I use a small rose colored cylindrical proxxon grindstone to do that.

The advantage to a milling cutter is that it will not cut

but "smear" the material.

When you finished the grinding, you should put back the electrical parts in place to see if they fit. Be sure the hole were the pickup springs sat

fits the pan shaped metal sheets. You may have to widen the holes a bit at its surface.. I use a proxxon ball-shaped rose colored grinding stone to do that. You may drill through the chassis where the pickup springs sat. The picture shows that I didn't do that completely, because if you are going to lower the chassis later, grinding down the inner part, you may damage the metal

if you fix it before grinding.

To fix the electrical parts, I use these capsules/cartridges offered to keep the ends of electrical cables together They usually are silver or nickel coated. The diameter I use is 0.75mm. (I use some of the bigger ones as bearings for the t-jet axles) Usually they are too long, though stick them on a nail (or a toothpick) and carefully cut them to about 2/3 of their length. Then peen the electrical parts with the cartridge (still on the nail) and run everything through the hole in the bottom of the chassis. Split the cartridge at the inside of the chassis with a cross-head screwdriver. That gives it the shape of a cross. Fold back the bars to the center of the cross and flatten everything using a small hammer and a cylindrical piece of steel. Be sure you have a solid piece of metal underneath the chassis when you do that.

Now you can complete the chassis with the missing AFX and t-jet part and run it as a t-jet chassis with the AFX electrical system or continue with Mark Owyangs description to lower the chassis

Have fun !

Note: Finding the replacement rivets is not easy, and I have no suggestions other than to search the Internet. Ed.