Paragon Jump Jets

[teshreve]

Anyone remember these?
I don't throw much away, which is good and bad...
But sometimes I find some interesting things because of it. Like these things:

After finally remembering what they are called, I googled them and found this auction.
It would seem I am missing a set of pistons. The next time I monkey with an old RC10, I am going to throw these turkeys in.
What they do is make the shock progressive. The tapered stinger slides through the piston hole, making the shock stiffer as it is compressed.

[badhoopty]

those are pretty wild.

[justinspeed79]

That's pretty cool. Did they actually work?

[teshreve]

Yes, the progressive feel was obvious and interesting.
However, I took them out long before I was good enough to know if they made the car perform better.
I have two reasons to believe they didn't make the car perform better:
1) I am not aware of any progressive rate shock design in use today.
2) With increased damping must come increased spring rate, all other things being equal. While Losi did make a progressive spring for a while, they were not necessarily for use with these Jump Jets. My guess is that in a long string of bumps, the car would pack very badly and be riding on the ground. For jumping, however, I bet they are king!

[johnnyboy]

I remember when those came out. Everyone at the '89 ROAR Nationals in Detroit were buying them up to try. I tried them out as well. Most people took them out after though.

[Eau Rouge]

Dan Louis invented them when he raced for Bolink and Paragon, and did a lot of his testing and R&D at my former local track in Joliet, Illinois. Just about everyone around here used them before they were released, and some guys liked them, but many didn't.

My conclusion was that they were gimmicks and inconsistent. The idea made sense, but in reality, you don't need a progressive piston valve or spring on these tiny cars.

Save your $5, they aren't really all that interesting of an item. I would put them in that "things that we all wasted money on for no reason" category.

[superfly]

There are two sets of JumpJets NIP at my LHS...In a remote corner of the store and I'm guessing they've been there for 15yrs or so. I look at them every time i go in and I've almost bought them twice in the past year but cant put up the 20 bucks for them.. I think they're 10 bucks a set of two if i remember right...

About the performance I'm guessing they werent that good or else we'd be seeing them in the shocks of today. They are an interesting peice of history though...

I guessing they would be great for huge jumps but that would be about it...I still might try them if i can haggle a deal with HobbyStore-guy