Chassis Availability

This seems to be an area of annoyance for a lot of people. They feel they need to 'jump through hoops' to get my chassis. Some turn to ebay to get these where scalpers have these marked up easily 2X what they are available from me for.

Below is an explanation on how Dash chassis are made and why they seem to be hard to get.

There isn't a factory that is cranking out Dash chassis.  I don't get assembled chassis from China.

All chassis are hand assembled here by myself, with some help from my wife and a couple guys I contract with for special projects.

I specify and source the parts and they come from at least 6 different factories. Arms and brushes come from one, chassis plastic from another, tires from another, gears and axles from another, etc....

I buy the parts by the 'thousands', but that doesn't translate into immediately having thousands of chassis available.....

I am still largely a one man operation, with contracted help when needed.

The only things the factory assembles are the following areas:

the axle and crown are pressed into the tub.

The stampings are attached to the bottom of the tub.

The pinion is pressed onto the cluster shaft. That's all that is done by factories.

The rest is all done by hand. By myself, with some help from my wife and 2 contract guys.

This is how it's been since I started making chassis over 10 years ago. Except I only added the contract help in the past few years.

It takes considerable time and effort to make even a few hundred chassis, let alone a few thousand.

I put chassis in the store whenever I feel I have enough to satisfy immediate demand.  Sales are always on Saturday and always @ 6PM Central. Emails are sent out well in advance of the sales to everyone who has signed up for marketing emails in my store.

I do it like this to give everyone an equal chance to buy. If I put chassis in the store every time I made a few dozen, I'd have the same guys snapping them up. 

That's what happened in the past and was the main reason for the creation of the 'Dash Group' where you had to be a member in order to buy chassis.

That group now gone  and chassis sales are open to everyone.  It's been like this for a couple years now.

You might not agree with how these are sold, many have disagreed with this method. I've been told I have an 'effed up' business model by one prominent scalper who threw a hissy fit when he couldn't get 500 chassis when he wanted them.

But this manner of selling is the fairest way to sell these. Everyone has an equal opportunity.

Over the course of the past few years, the number of different chassis has increased and nearly each chassis is available in multiple colors. This results in a rotating production schedule and the inability to keep chassis in stock and some chassis not being available for 3 or 4 months at a time.

There is no possible way that I can keep an inventory of these in the store, they aren't made in large enough numbers and there is no set schedule as to what will be made when.

But production IS skewed toward 'basic black' T-Dash Classic...

So while it's frustrating to not be able to go to the Dash store and buy a chassis 'whenever', please know that I will never let my quality suffer 'just to make more'.

I'll never have these mass produced. My defect rate would be through the roof and I'd spend more time fixing problems than if I just built them myself from the start.

I am the first and last line of QC... It will always be that way.

Also be aware that the system I use for selling, does NOT lock up inventory when you put it in your cart.  So there is the possibility that items may be sold out before you have a chance to checkout.