I am working on building an HO scale SD60F. I have an SD60F Kaslo resin shell and an Athearn SD60 RTR frame. I have had to cut the weight on each end of the frame, and trim the width of the frame. The shell sits on the frame pretty good now, but I will need to trim the resin a little. So the shell came with coupler mounts and the frame has coupler mounts, so the question is which ones do I use? I will have to remove the mounts on either the shell or the frame as they interfere with the shell sitting on the frame. So I think I should cut the mounts off of the shell and use the frame mounts, what thoughts do you have?
I have diesels with shell mounted couplers and other diesels with frame mounted couplers. Either way works. For your project, pick the way that requires the least bashing of shell or frame, which one allows the easiest removal of shell from frame, and gets the couplers at the proper height, and which looks better to you.
Thanks for the info, I don’t know of another way to attach the shell to the frame if I don’t you the frame mounted couplers and use the coupler boxes as the means to keep the shell in place. If I use the shell mounts, how do I keep the shell in place? Right now it just sort of sits on the frame.
My first instinct is that while the body mounts would probably hold up fine, the frame coupler mounts would be sturdier and removing the body mounts would be easier than removing the frame mounts.
Nile, did you check out the link in my first post? He goes through everything (3 pages) on a build just like yours. Lots of great guys over there that could answer your questions in more detail.
It would be nice to see some pics of your work. It would be easier to offer some sugestions, if we could see it.
I personally prefer frame mounted couplers since I feel that is more durable since all the weight of the train is loaded onto the loco’s coupler that is connected to metal frame. Plus it is easier mounting the shell to the frame then other methods, IMHO. Plus it is easier to remove material from the resin shell then metal frame.
If you dont use couplers to hold the shell then you will have to locate at least 2 to 4 locations on the frame (one/two on each side) that you will have access to from the bottom so you can drill a hole and screw the shell on. You would then glue square styrene on the shell at those locations so the screw will have something to attach to. This can be difficult when the chassis is loaded with frame weights like it appears to be on the RTR SD60 frame.
I would have thought the same, but began body-mounting couplers to allow better detailing of the pilots, particularly on Athearn Blue Box diesels.
Four of these…
…had no coupler issues pulling a 71 car train up a curving 3/4 mile (HO) grade of 3.5%.
I never bothered to weigh that train, but two of these…
…on a similar but shorter grade, manage 44 hoppers with “live” loads, again, with no coupler problems. Trailing weight was just over 22lbs.
Converting to body-mounted couplers closed the unprototypical gap below the coupler and allowed use of snowplows or alternate pilots. It shouldn’t be too difficult to devise a method to hold the body shell and frame together, but the method may vary by model or manufacturer.
I’m guessing that the loco shell in question doesn’t have that gap beneath the couplers, so your choice, in my opinion, would be to pick the easist-to-remove coupler mounts and remove them. Whichever is left should stand up just fine.
I have decided to go with the frame mount. It just seems easier, especially since I have already put a lot of time into this project and now I’m in the “want to get it done” phase. I realize patience is important to get the product that I want. I’ll try and post pictures tomorrow.
Not that it matters at this point, but I’m in the same camp of most of the other posters of frame-mounting the coupler boxes (or using the existing ones.) Modifying resin is easy. Modifying the frame requires a lot of careful work with the dremel.
