Larry
Long Winded Old Fart
Well, after about 5 days of sitting at my workbench I've reworked all of the couplers, trucks & wheels on 165 freight cars. All of the couplers are lined up using the Micro-Mark coupler alignment block. I also took all of the wheels out of every truck & cleaned each one w/the Truck Tuner from Micro-Mark.
I also set all of the wheels to the NMRA ga. & some had to be spread apart a little w/my Micro-Mark wheel puller. Then some of the couplers had to have new springs put in & I did that w/my new M-M spring installer. I don't know how I ever did w/out these tools all these years. I bought them about a year ago & have just used them.
I still have about 100 more freight cars, 35 passenger cars & all my engines to do yet. That little reamer for cleaning the axle pockets is a tool in its-self.
When you are using it U can actually feel it smoothing the trucks. If the wheels don't spin freelie after I use it I apply some graphite powder to the ends of the axles & that really makes them spin easy. I hooked up 85 cars to 3 engines & they rolled 100% better. No drag & no couplers pulled out of their sockets. I had to add spacer washers to almost all of the cars to get them to line up w/the coupler block. Only 1 out of 50 were actually in the right place.
I also cut some coupler pockets off of the cheap truck assy.'s & glued them to the bottom of the car. Body mounted. They worked real good. I like the body mounted couplers better, now that I have made the switch.
I haven't done the long pass. cars yet. May have to leave them attached to the couplers.
It's really nice to have all the couplers at the same heighth. Nothing unhooks on a slight graduation of the rails anymore. I'm going to have to buy about 100 Kadee's w/diff. lenghts of shafts & raised & lowered heads for all my engines that I haven't worked on yet. Engines are usually the hardest to work on because of the diff. mfgrs.
End this Novel.
Larry
I also set all of the wheels to the NMRA ga. & some had to be spread apart a little w/my Micro-Mark wheel puller. Then some of the couplers had to have new springs put in & I did that w/my new M-M spring installer. I don't know how I ever did w/out these tools all these years. I bought them about a year ago & have just used them.
I still have about 100 more freight cars, 35 passenger cars & all my engines to do yet. That little reamer for cleaning the axle pockets is a tool in its-self.
When you are using it U can actually feel it smoothing the trucks. If the wheels don't spin freelie after I use it I apply some graphite powder to the ends of the axles & that really makes them spin easy. I hooked up 85 cars to 3 engines & they rolled 100% better. No drag & no couplers pulled out of their sockets. I had to add spacer washers to almost all of the cars to get them to line up w/the coupler block. Only 1 out of 50 were actually in the right place.
I also cut some coupler pockets off of the cheap truck assy.'s & glued them to the bottom of the car. Body mounted. They worked real good. I like the body mounted couplers better, now that I have made the switch.
I haven't done the long pass. cars yet. May have to leave them attached to the couplers.
It's really nice to have all the couplers at the same heighth. Nothing unhooks on a slight graduation of the rails anymore. I'm going to have to buy about 100 Kadee's w/diff. lenghts of shafts & raised & lowered heads for all my engines that I haven't worked on yet. Engines are usually the hardest to work on because of the diff. mfgrs.
End this Novel.
Larry