I have looked several places and either I can’t find or no one else has had this problem. After owning for several years, but not operating my Genesis F units because of the crummy MRC decoders, I have replaced the decoders with Soundtraxx decoders. What a difference! But now I have a new problem!
The problem is the rear truck on the A units and both trucks on the B unit hit the coupler pocket. I had replaced the original couplers and pockets with the recommended KaDee #36 and #38 (I believe) and the end of the truck “bridges” onto the pocket. I tried replacing the original pocket and coupler and got the same result.
The consequence of this “bridging” is that the truck will barely ride level (in fact runs downhill slightly toward the coupler) and has no play to swivel up or down. The result of this is the trailing truck’s leading wheel is raised up and doesn’t make good contact with the rail (creating the usual problems). These trucks also rub as they try to swivel side to side when going around a curve.
Has anyone noticed this? Any suggestions? At this point all I can think of is to re drill the coupler mounting screw (and there is little room for that) or cut off the end of the truck (which would weaken it and expose the gears)
If you owners of Athearn Genesis F units would take a look at the truck/coupler interaction and respond, I would appreciate it.
I have some of the Genesis F7 units, and I use Kadee #38 couplers on them. I run an ABBA Santa Fe consist with absolutely no problems. Sometimes, I break the consist and run them as two separate AB consists, also with no problems. For what it is worth, my minimum radius is 30", but that is not to say that the radius on curves is your problem.
I don’t have any genesis Fs, but what you’e describing may in fact be the worm gear cover on the rear truck not being on all the way. I have had a P2K GP30 do the same thing.
Can you shave a bit of plastic off the backside of the coupler box? I have to do that when I put #5’s on many of my blue box units. I drill the coupler pad and use a self tapping screw, but have to nip off a bit of the box to clear the frame and mount flat on the factory mounting pad. If you have a digi cam, take a pic of the truck and offending coupler so we can see how much its interfering with it. Its possible the truck worm covers are not snapped totaly into place, but I know from my Genesis F units, the truck to coupler pad is tight. What did you do with the old MRC sound decoders? They work ok for me on my DC layout and I have a couple of GP9’s that would be nice to have sound in them. Cheers Mike
After my initial response, I read the other replies to your post and decided to go down to my layout and take a look as you requested.
As I mentioned in my initial response, I have Kadee #38 couplers mounted in the Kadee coupler pads and boxes. When I manually swing the trucks, the corners of the trucks do ride over the coupler pads but there is no interference. Even when I try to get the trucks to bind on top of the coupler pads, I cannot create a problem.
The only three things that I can think of are: (1) the coupler boxes you are using are too deep or (2) the screw is not tight enough to drive the coupler pad down out of the way or (3) the trucks are the problem not the coupler boxes or pads.
Sorry that I cannot be more help, but these are my observations.
Did the original pocket and coupler do this before the Kadee conversion?
I just looked at one of my Genesis B units. I can get some binding on the trucks but it has nothing to do with the coupler. Various parts (brake cylinder, leaf springs) on the side of the truck are hitting the ladder stirrups on the body.