Refurbish your pickup shoes save $$ lexan body mounts cheap

By MoparMatt

i was at my local craft store to pickup some small diameter brass tubing to use for body mounts for lexan bodies yesterday, and i had an idea. any of you remember changing drum brakes on your cars years ago. the original linings were bonded to the backing plates, but the ones you got from the auto parts place were likely to be riveted to the backing plates. you had to exchange your old shoes because they were most likely rebuilt for somebody else to buy.

well i measured my pickup shoes on my dedicated racers. i use AW X-T shoes. they are .010" thick silver plated brass. and cost approx $1.00 a pair to replace.i found sheet brass in .010" thick at my local craft shop for $3.27 a sheet. the sheet dimensions are 4"x10". what i did was cut small rectangles out with my dremel to the approximate size of the contact patch on the pickup shoes. i cleaned, and buttered this area up with acid flux, very lightly clamped the patches in place with a small pair of needle nose visegrips. i ground the teeth off of the vise grips so i wouldent mar or damage any of the parts. i then soldered these rectangles on. i filed the forward edges rounded so they wouldent snag on any of the track connections. i am sure this would work for any slot car pick up shoe.

i have 20 extra pairs of burnt out pickup shoes in my parts box, didnt have the heart to toss em in the trash, now i am going to repair all of them. the neat thing is you can heat up the new "linings" when they are worn out, remove them and replace them i would guess indefinitely. i estimated by the size of the sheet, and the size of the piece you would need to cut out and use, that you can probably reline over 300 pairs of shoes with one sheet. just by figuring my auto world X-T shoes at a $1.00 a pair this works out to around $300. not sure what super G+ shoes cost per pair as mine on my F1s are not worn out yet, and when they do i will reline them now. all in all a hell of a savings to buy other slot car related goodies.

the brass sheet i got was made by K & S engineering part number/stock number is #5251 you can go to

http://www.ksmetals.com

PS: my body mounts were made from KS brass tubing #5085 3/64" outer diameter by .006 inside diameter. you get 3, 12" pieces of this tubing for about $3.00. more than enough to make as many body mounts as you will ever need. i mounted my body posts by drilling, fitting and super gluing the tubing into the sides of the chassis with gap filling super glue, you can use cut down straight pins with a little bend in them to make them pin the body in place, or what i am going to do is make what looks like big unused staples that fit from the front to the back tubes on each side and straddle the sides of the body.