I don’t know if the horse is dead or not but I’m going to give it another whack anyway.
On my Athearn heavy weight cars the coupler is truck mounted. What Kadee couplers do you guys use? The coupler pocket doesn’t look like it will except anything I have.
On my Bachmann Spectrum steam 4-8-2 the pocket is also odd. Do I have to change the pocket?
My thinking is the #145 short and #148 standard might work, but before I order [%-)]
help?
I appreciate any help
Lee
Re: the Athearn heavyweight cars, Kadee suggests the MCS TM (whatever that looks like). See the conversion chart here http://www.kadee.com/conv/holist.pdf.
Lee,
A Kadee #5 or #148 will fit almost every Athearn product ever made in plastic.
If you are really interested in improving your Athearn passenger cars, you can get the spacers sold by Jay-Bee, body mount Kadee #36 or #46 long shank couplers, sliding them back some to close up the space between the cars.
Then, you can add American Limited diaphragms and then they start look like a real passenger train.
Sheldon
Thanks Guys for the quick response.
Maxman
That web site is great. I printed it out. Now when I order something I can sound like I know what I’m doing.
Good day
Lee
Lee
If you have fairly large radius curves, you can mount the coupler boxes directly on the body and get rid of the truck mounted couplers.
Just a thought
CZ
Lee, somehow I missed the Bachmann part of your question the first time.
On the Bachmann locos you want to use the Kadee #148 - BUT, you will likely find that when you tighen up the cover the coupler will not move.
Two choices, Gently file the coupler so that the shank is thinner - I do this by dragging the coupler shank along a big mill file - or, shim the cover effectively making the box deeper. On the front of the 4-8-2, and most spectrun locos, you can simply file out the coupler opening a little with a small flat jewelers file until the #148 fits in freely, then reinstal the coupler retaining clip.
As for the Athearn trucks, that whole setup works just fine as built. For a simple conversion, just install the #148’s and have a nice day. You will not have any luck coupling or uncoupling on curves, it simply does not work until you get into really large radii.
Sheldon
Hey Lee, I went back and looked at that conversion chart a little closer. The fine print at the bottom of each chart says that TM means truck mounted, but the MCS means “not verified by Kadee”. So, you can’t order anything from that chart for your specific application. However, as the other posters have stated, you should be able to get a #5 to fit into that truck mounted coupler box.
Regards
MCS stands for Medium (length) Center Shank (not underset or overset). The question mark means “not verified by Kadee.”
Yup, correct. I did say it was in the “fine print”.
I haved used #5’s on all of my Athearn passenger cars and all are truck mounted in the original mounting pocket. Just plop in the spring, coupler and snap the metal plate back on. No problems with uncoupling as long as it’s on a straight section of track. My current layout has 24" minimum curves, but at one time I ran the cars on a layout with 18" curves and had no problems.