I want to shim or replace the sagging couplers on a couple of plastis HO cars I bought at an estate sale. I can only describe them to you. The hopper is a 2 bay with the metal wheled plastic trucks fastened to the main body through an end to end spine this spine contains the brake cylinders etc.as well as the truck locating bosses.
The couplers are housed in a molded in pocket that is covered with a silver cover. This cover is shaped to surround two sides of the coupler pocket. There are rectangular slots in the cover "sides"to engage two bosses cast into the sides of the pocket. This cover doesn’t seem to come off with gentle prying on the sides. The other cars are similar. Questions:
Those are Athearn products. Remove the coupler cover by gently prying one side open with a small bladed screwdriver. If they are horn-hook couplers throw them away and use Kadee #5 or #148 couplers.
If there is still too much free play in the couplers, get some Kadee washers and put them between the coupler and the cover. Kadee makes two different thicknesses of fiber washers for this purpose. Pinch the sides of the coupler box cover in slightly at the cutout for the tab on the coupler box, and they will fit better.
Athearn hoppers that I have dealt with suffer from warped center beams on which the coupler boxes are mounted in addition to the problem of too much free play in the coupler box.
Athearn BB cars have ‘springlike’ covers that pry off. The underframe that holds the metal weight in place also holds the KD coupler too low. Cutting this off and cementing the Kadee coupler box directly to the cars bottom, as above, is the best cure.
I PREFER THE #5 / 40 SERIES since they have more ‘gathering’ surface. Consider the #47 for extreme cases.