I Just started using Intermountain 36" metal wheels that I have pre-painted for all of my cars. Over last weekend I removed the wheels from 3 of my RTR AThearn cars and installed the weathered Intermountains. To my dismay the new metal Intermountain wheels didn’t roll at all. I removed the wheels and took my little tool that you place onto the truck, and cleaned out the wheel sets. Re-installing the wheels again and again they didn’t roll. So I repeated the process this time sqeezing the truck as I rotated the tool. Once again the new metal wheels still didn’t roll freely.
What is going on here? Has anyone else had this problem with Intermountain metal wheels and Athearn trucks? I’m not sure what to do now. Any suggestions?
I wish I could help but my answer isn’t what you want to hear. So far I’ve installed Intermountain 33" and 36" wheelsets on the original trucks of old Athearn and Roundhouse rolling stock and on my IHC HW passenger cars. They all roll freely and run much better than the old plastic wheelsets. Maybe it’s your trucks??
Same story here. I have purchased and installed over 800 33" and 36" Intermountain wheel sets with no problems at all. I know that also is not what what you wanted to hear but that is the case with me. I have used them on Athearn, IHC, Bowser, Accurail etc and no problems.
Is it possible that you replaced Athearn 33" wheels with the Intermountain 36" wheels and now have interference with the car bodies. If you do not have a coupler height gage, replace the Athearn wheels on two of the cars and see if the couplers line up. If they do, replace the wheels on one of the cars and see if the couplers maintain their alignment. If the car with the intermountain wheels is now higher, it means that the original Athearn wheels were smaller.
When I pre-painted my wheels I laid out a cardboard box flat and in many rows I poked one end of the wheel into the cardboard so that they would stand upend. I then painted them with a red primer rattle can style. So when I had this little problem installing them and they not rolling I figure that I must have damaged the tips when poking them onto the cardboard. So I tried a couple of wheels that I didn’t paint and sure enough the same problem them not rolling occured. So it was my guess that it was not due to my pre-painting deal.
Don’t worry, I had the same situation a few years ago. You must have early run Athearn RTR cars. Though produced years back, we can assume that quite a few early run cars are still sitting on store shelves. They also pop up frequently on ebay. These early run cars have “NEM” trucks, which feature Europeon standards, not NMRA (please correct me if I’m wrong). Don Gibson has chimed in on other threads and explained the details.
Anyway I winded up purchasing Walthers freight car trucks ( only cost a couple of dollars) and installed them on my Athearn RTR cars.
The RTR cars that came out afterwards had the NMRA compliant trucks.
Leon raises the same concern that came to my mind when I first read your post. Are these passenger cars that you are putting these IM 36" wheels on or just rolling stock? If it is, then that may be your problem right there. Most rolling stock uses 33" wheels.
Zak, if you flip your car over and spin the individual wheels by hand, do they spin freely or do they bind up? If they bind up, put in 33" wheels.
Here’s the deal: I bought a whole mess of metal wheels back a couple of years ago. Some from Intermountain and some from Branchline Trains. I installed all of my Branchline Trains’ wheels first into my Athearn BB cars and my Walther’s cars and they worked great. Now I’m on to the Intermountain wheels and I’ve only tried to install them into 3 of my new Athearn RTR Hopper cars that as far as I know are new models by Athearn. So Now I’m just going to double check these wheels in other manufactures’ trucks like Walther’s, Athearn BB, and even Intermountain’s own cars and see if the is the wheels or the trucks.
Speaking of Branchline Trains’ metal wheels: Not bad wheels if I do say so myself.
I ran into a couple of Athearn blue box kits, from about the time that Athearn introduced the RTR line, that appear to use a narrower truck.
InterMountain, Proto 2000 or Kadee wheelsets, they all failed to roll in the trucks that came with those cars. First I bought new Proto 2000 trucks for those two cars to get them rolling, then later on I spent some serious time working on the Athearn trucks with the “Tool”, using it to remove small amounts of plastic until I was able to get the Proto 2000 wheelsets to roll freely.
The InterMountain and Kadee wheels seem to have slightly longer axles, so I never could get them to work.
I’ve used InterMountain wheels in other Athearn RTR & Blue Box kits, as well as Accurail, C&BT Shops, and MDC kits, with no problems.
This is why there are different length axles made by Reboxx etc. You have to have the correct size replacements. Measure the old axles with a dial caliper and buy the correct replacements.