Fray Car Tuning

By Tim Leppert

Gear plates and matching

In this episode we'll cover two things, Choosing a gear plate and matching it to one of your chassis.

Gear plates:
I will admit to being lazy when it comes to gear plates. If I find one that fits a chassis well, I use it. I don't care if it's a lettered plate or not.
I never try to match a certain plate and chassis by number or letter. I just check the fits that are important to me.

What I look for is:
square topped Idler posts.
rear hole is not too big.
no cuts or grind marks that deem it illegal for the fray.

To prepare for the fitting process, you will need to disassemble your plates. If you have any plates that read "patent applied for", keep these gears separate from the others. They are very early, and usually have better machined gear trains.
As an aside, I do not recommend removing the nine tooth from the shaft. If it's tight, leave it on!

When you have your pile of gear plates, it's time to start checking fits. This is easy, when you get set up.
You will need:
Your tech block
The 2" long axles you had before
A gear clamp band, (not a tight one!)

Now take you best chassis, grab a plate and assemble it with the band. Install the drill blanks in both the main bearing holes and the cluster gear hole. They will be sticking out the top and the bottom.
Now turn the chassis so that the drill blanks are horizontal. and place it on your tech block the same way we did the axle holes.
They will not touch the same way that the axles holes did but we are looking for the closest to touching all four as we can get.

Remember that feel and repeat with all the plates you have. When you find the top three or four plates, save them as your top matches and we'll move on to choosing the arm.

Next Episode: Armatures

Previous Episode: Main

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