The Kadee whisker couplers have to be the most effective design because the coupler swing is maximized by the wire springs.
I recently tracked down a derailing issue to a newly acquired Atlas tank car with accumate couplers. It was derailing a following Rapido tank car equipped with McDonald Cartier Kadee knock offs (inferior copies of Kadee #5). Very frustrating to track down. The Rapido car derailed but it was caused by the Atlas car.
The Atlas car was literally dragging the Rapido car off track.
The problem disappeared when I put the Atlas car behind the Rapido car.
Then it ocurred to me that the accumate has two plastic springs to center the coupler pieces (goofy two part coupler) which occupy more lateral swing space than the whiskers or indeed the brass spring used by Kadee, Walthers (Proto max is just a Kadee #5 knock off) or Rapido. Bachmann EZ mate have the same design deficiency. Plastic centering springs just occupy too much space inside the coupler box.
I’ve changed my mind again about accumate couplers. Clever design but ultimately functionally inferior to Kadee. Even Kadee knock offs that duplicate the #5 just don’t. The Kadee is still superior. Their whisker couplers are pretty much state of the art.
Any equipment that doesn’tcome with Kadees as factory equipped is CAD$7.50 overpriced.
And why does Intermountain still sell kits with plastic wheelsets and such awful trucks…? Their RTR products don’t come with such bad wheels or trucks.
My first foray into the “knockoff” HO knuckle coupler was back when the McHenry first came along, late 1990s, maybe, and I had installed them on a string of Proto 2000 tank car kits that I had assembled at the time.
A short while later I had pulled the cut of tank cars out of a siding and found that nearly every coupler had lost its ability to hold the knuckle closed. As it turns out the cars had been sitting for a while on a slight grade that compressed each coupler which, in turn, had deformed the little “finger” spring rendering it useless.
In the years since then all sorts of knockoffs came along and I have no use for any of them. I will say that the Walthers Proto Max is the “best” of the bunch and when these are factory installed on any of the RTR Walthers cars I can at least run them without any immediate problems.
The Rapido Macdonald-Cartier coupler is a very poor imitation of the Kadee “Scale-Head” coupler. Jason has admitted first-hand that they suffer from QC issues.
There was so much parting flash inside some of the knuckles it had rendered the couplers useless.
I use the “whisker” series and the original bronze centering spring Kadees interchangeably pretty much suiting each choice on a case-by-case basis. For instance the recent Rapido coupler changeouts I did had a decent centering spring in place so I simply used the equivalent of the traditional shank as found on the "old reliable #5.
Manufacturers have mentioned the costs and hassles involved in shipping quantities of genuine Kadee couplers to Asia with the taxes and duties etc. involved that none are willing to risk the effort to go that route.
The irony is that I well remember how happy folks were when we finally got Kadee-compatible couplers in kits and RTR instead of the horn-hooks. And then the compaining started all over again – mere mechanical compatibility was not enough if a coupler doesn’t couple. The best that can be said is that the knock-offs at least buy you some time – for RTR stuff I use the knock-offs until they fail. And that clock is ticking the moment the wheels start rolling.
When assembling an Accurail kit the little plastic bag with the Accumate pieces goes into a little drawer on the workbench. I have quite a supply of those little bags! Ditto for other kits – I install Kadees right away. I guess laziness takes over for the RTR stuff.
I suppose it is not really all that newsworthy to say that Kadee really knows how to make couplers. Even when they tinker with design they still know how.
Hey, the knockoffs work fine untill they fail and then you can install the Kadee. I have lots of the other brands on my road and they work great but I have Kadee replacements for when they fail which a certain amount will. I have even seen Kadees fail but that is very rare.
Yes, I buy bulk packages of Kadees so I always have them on hand. Any kit assembly gets Kadees right away, along with Intermountain wheelsets. I converted my whole rolling stock fleet to metal wheelsets, and in the process replaced any non-Kadee couplers as well. I will let RTR rolling stock run until failure on fakes, sometimes. Locomotives get Kadees before going into service, because there tends to be more stress pulling the whole train than just tagging along like a caboose. Did you ever have a coupler fail on a caboose?
My worst experiences have been with the small, close-to-scale, plastic couplers that seem dainty and that don’t couple worth a darn. They seem to want to stay closed. I have had to remove all of mine, if not right away then inside of six months, or until a too-long reach trying to lift one end to slide the couplers inside each other goes wrong and I turn the air blue, whichever comes first.
Kadees are excellent, and they provide a healthy variety as anyone who has tried to get a set of heavyweight passenger cars to stay coupled can attest.
I don’t like “scale head” couplers even if they’re metal. They don’t work well enough for me, not consistent at all. Fine if already coupled but often finicky if not already coupled. Athearn seems keen on fitting locomotives with semi scale couplers. I doubt so called scale couplers actually are.
My Accu-Mate, X2F, and McHenry couplers go into a quart Zip-Lok bag that hangs on one side of the workbench. When it’s full it gets tagged $2 and gets sold at a swap meet. So far, newer Walthers metal couplers seem to be OK. The same goes for plastic wheelsets, except they will sell for $3.
Athearns “scale head couplers” are plastic and problematic. Kadee scale head couplers work well and come pre-installed on some of the best HO rolling stock made these days, includine:
Tangent Scale Models
ExactRail
Moloco
Wheels of Time
Intermountain
The main holdouts are Athearn, Atlas, Rapido and ScaleTrains.
Rapido was going to go Kadee but the forest fires around the plant caused a supply shortage, once that is alleviated Rapido will be supplied with Kadee’s.
The other problem with Accubreaks and McJunkies is they are plastic and plastic is slippery so even if everything is good height wise between cars a slight imperfection in the track will cause one coupler to slip over the other one if both are plastic.
That’s more or less true except for “scale head” which I find inconsistent even when coupling identical couplers to identical cars. Also, Rapido McDonald Cartier (isn’t that just a hotel name?) don’t couple well to each other. Rapido needs to ditch those or make them closer to a real Kadee.
Walthers Protomax are the best of the rest in my experience. Their knuckle springs are just weak.
The advantage to using Kadee is they couple better than any other brand when coupling to any other brand than same brand couplers couple to each other.
I am very snooty when it comes to couplers. I put a KD in everything I can. I don’t even give the Brand X couplers a chance to fail. For years I swore by the KD #5 which fit in 99% of the equipment I’ve had over the years. Then they came out with the #148 whisker coupler which is even better. I’m not replacing the #5s but everything new gets a KD #148 whether it is a kit or RTR. I also put metal wheels on everything. I’ve tried both Walthers and KD wheelsets and give a slight edge to KD. I’ve settled on the black 33" ribbed wheels as my go to choice for freight cars. The Micro-Mark truck tuner is also an invaluable tool. Lastly, proper weight is a must.
I don’t like the scale couplers because they look too small even though I know they’re not. When I see couplers on prototype cars, they look big and bulky. KD #5 and #148 look right even though I know they are too big. Most important, they work reliably. I wouldn’t say that about any other brand of couplers.
Wierd. Even the Kadee “scale head” are over sized but I decided to use them over the #5 KD head because the look better. I buy a lot of Tangent, Moloco, Exactrail, Wheels of Time and Intermountain freight cars and no way am I changing out those couplers. What will get changed out are the Athearn Mchenrys and Atlas Accumates. [;)]
Yes, the few scale head kadees that I have seem to require the cars to be banged together harder…really a bad combination with these excessively free rolling cars.
Which tend to be installed in the higher end products. Go figure, more money spent to achieve fidelity in appearence gets you less fidelity in operation. Irrelevant to some I suppose.
I have found that the Athearn plastic McHenry scale-ish head couplers operate no differently than the kadee scale heads I have, and at about half the price. But they should be mated with each other and not blended, IMO.
For my needs, I like the factory Kadee trucks with the black wheelsets. They roll very poorly, comparatively, but are a great match with the scale head Kadee coupler that requires a harder bang.
“Very Poorly” seems excessively critical. Surely not as freely as Intermountain wheels in Tichy sideframes that have been treated with a tuner. This has been the most freely rolling set up I have found.
Still, “Very Poorly” seems like a harsh assessment. My Kadee trucks/wheels roll fine.
