Customizing the axle alignment jig

The Redline Derby Axle Alignment Jig has gone through quite an evolution in a very short amount of time. It’s taken a few different forms since it was made available late last year, and each time it got a little better. I'm very happy with and I hope you are too.

The jig is a wonderful little tool that takes a lot of worry out of the modding process, but when I used it recently to build some cars, I found the car was a little...slidy...when it was on the jig.

It wasn’t a show stopper by any means. The jig is intended as a sit-n-wait type of tool anyway. It’s not really an active work stand but I found that if I needed to move the jig, or sometimes even just bumped it, the car sitting on it would easily slide in the blocks and I’d have to readjust. Again, not a big deal, just something I noticed.

But as is usual for me, when something I made doesn’t feel perfect, I think it’s crap. My mind starts racing with ideas on how I need to redesign the whole thing. Ending is better than mending. But this time I took a moment to think and instead of starting over, tried something else. We’re a bunch of modders, right? So I decided to mod. Although I use the term lightly in this case.

I needed a no-slip surface for the wheel blocks and a quick internet searching led me to a very cheap solution, Plasti-Dip.

Plasti-Dip is paint-on rubber intended for coating your tools for better grip, but the paint is just as easily painted on with a brush. I put a few coats of Plasti-Dip on the wheel blocks and that’s all it took. No more sliding.

So if you have a jig and feel you need a little more stability for your cars when they’re on the blocks, Plasti-Dip is a way to solve it. A can of the Plasti-Dip is $7 at Home Depot. The only downside is you’re left with a near full can of paint but hey...I’m sure you can find more stuff to cover in rubber, right?