Fray Armatures

[RichD]

A fellow racer just asked me if I could spare a Fray/T-Jet SS type pancake armature, but I am out of those. The ones that I use have not been available for some time, so I looked over my list of bookmarks to see what else might be available. I already knew that Alan Galinko and Daniel Cardinale were out of business. When I checked Dynamic Armatures that was gone as well. The only places that I could find quickly that still have worked up armatures were Denis Rutherford's and ECHORR Jets.
In the past I have paid good money for armatures that looked good at first glance, but were actually only mediocre performers on the track at best. That is what you get if someone tries to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. You might be able to improve on a junk arm, but it will just be a better junk arm that will never win a race.
So I was hoping that there still might be other active sources out there. Another area of interest would be people that do custom winds.

[aviva7]

Isn't it time to limit the arms to those readily available?

[Ecbill]

It would be nice to know of some active pancake arm winders. Not necessarily for Fray but any kind of racing. Those of us into drag racing would appreciate some hot winds.

[Norman]

This fella is selling pancake arms on ebay.
https://www.ebay.com/sch/byrdman1092/m. ... pg=&_from=

Might be worth a try.

[RichD]

None of those armatures would be legal under our rules.

[RichD]

I did some testing with a Dash 3 lamination 16 ohm armature yesterday. I wanted to see if those would be competitive with a good worked up Aurora 16 ohm Fray/T-Jet SS armature. First I ran a T-Jet SS car with a Tornado arm that cost $28, the best lap time was a 5.691 on my ~50 foot MaxTrax. The car had a JL '70 Camaro body. I had faced off a Dash arm that measured 16.8 ohms on all three poles using a drill press. I epoxy balanced the arm using a magnetic balancer, it only took a tiny dab of epoxy on two of the poles to get the balance nearly perfect. With the Dash arm the car turned a 5.654, with the Aurora arm the car had a little more punch, but it was harder to get a perfect lap. With both arms I had the brakes turned on, but the control was turned all the way down. The track record with my best car using the same body is 5.527, that car cost $160.
The Dash arms cost $6.99 or $5.00 if you bought ten at a time.

[Austin]

Thanks Rich, So the Dash armatures are a good buy to have to cars run more even. Don't know much about the armatures or if it really betters to me right now as we are just setting up your old 2 lane Tomy track. I in joy reading all your.

[TuscoTodd]

Rich - that is great to hear! Looking forward to trying one in one of my builds here in the future!