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Dyeing Your Slot Car Chassis'

Dyeing Chassis Parts
If you care about looks enough to remove the 'Made in Hong Kong' sticker, then you may be a candidate for dyeing your chassis! We began dyeing our chassis's a few years ago. Partially for looks and partially for performance. We like the looks of a black chassis under our cars as opposed to the typical grey. A lot of folks have asked how we do it so we thought we'd post this page in an effort to help answer questions for those interested in giving it a try. We’re not dye experts by the way, we just know what’s worked for us since we started doing it. Is it overkill? Probably, but no more than anything else on this crazy site!

At Right, A two-tone dye job

Things to watch for. The only real thing to watch for is making sure not to use anything that will ‘soften’ the copper, like using Ammonia in an Ultrasonic Cleaner may do. Try not to ‘boil’ the plastic, as you may create warpage problems instead of correcting them. If you have something to put in the base of the ‘pot’, like a grate, to raise the nylon more to the middle of the bath and away from the heat source, you will greatly Greenuce the chance of any warpage problems. Take $1 worth of household Aluminum screen and form a 'bowl'. Flip the bowl over and place it in the bottom of your pot. Voila' - you've just made a grate!

Heating & warping. Heating a chassis MAY change it's geometry by allowing the Nylon to go back to a shape in it's 'memory'. Over-heating a chassis may introduce new warping problems. If you have a few "burned out" chassis's, you might consider trying it on one of those first so you'll know what to expect. You might even overheat/over-boil a junker just to see it's effect.

Hardening. We believe it hardens the outer skin to some degree, but others have argued that it doesn't. Our thinking is that since the Dye fills small 'pores', it therefore hardens the outer 'skin'. The more times you 'rinse and repeat' the harder it gets. The harder it is, the smoother the various oiled surfaces will be. Boiling. We're avert to boiling parts directly. Get the Dye bath boiling with a lot of Kosher Salt, maybe a half cup to a gallon of bath. Once you've reached a boil and the salt hand Dye has dissolved, turn off the heat. Once the temp had gotten down to about 180-190 degrees, you can add your parts. Let them sit in there until the bath cools, usually about 20 minutes or so.

Alignment & changing geometry. We've used everything from coins & buttons to wood & cloth trying to align or realign stuff...

Dye. You can use RIT Dye to test or for your final Dyeing, but if you do your homework there are some specialty Nylon Dyes that are a little more "magical". We prefer powdered Dyes, but liquids work as well. Try these guys for Dye other than RIT: http://www.dharmatrading.com/ Their 639 black and 601 yellow is what we’ve been using lately. Due to the chassis’s being grey to begin with, the end result of the yellow is more of a golden color. They recommend using White Vinegar as an acidic agent, but we still like to use plain old kosher salt. We think the dye job turns out better.

An extreme example. At Right: We were venting and clearing a pre-dyed chassis for a drag racer a while back and could definitely tell a difference in what it took to get through the chassis with an X-acto and grinder.

We had to re-dye the chassis when we were done because the cuts & grinds took away some of the surface dye (this one was for us - we're overboard on having it look right) but the dye runs deeper than one would guess.

We don’t really have a bonafide scientific way of testing for hardness here in the lab, but you can see a difference in the surface with magnification. The biggest thing of course is that it does look neat and is a nice differentiator.

It's a great trick for those wanting to bring some additional excitement into their T-jet racing!