I had bought a pack of Atlas wheelsets awhile ago and in the process of installing/removing them I managed to move the wheel on the axle. So now some will cause the cars to rock. Now the wheel and axle are no longer 90 degrees to each other. Is there a way to fix it or should I just toss them and learn to be more gentle?
I also just got an Atlas 90 ton hopper which I would like to mount the coupler to the body. It came with Accumate couplers mounted on the trucks. What would b the best way to mount the couplers to the body? Not really a rivet counter I just think it looks better.
Gary,
The wheel should fit in little depressions in the truck frame, simple as that. Move it around till it seats in the depressions.
As far as body mounts, most of my n scale equipment is truck mounted. I was going to go convert it all to MicroTrains body mounts but I just don’t see a need to.
Yes, most N-scale rolling stock is equipped with truck mounted couplers. There are some that come with pilot holes to make body mounting couplers easier, but I’m fairly sure that Atlas 90 ton hoppers are not one of them. I own a dozen or so and they seem to do fine with Accumates. It’s probably because these cars are lighter and don’t exert a lot of strain on the couplers. Accumates have a tendency to fail under heavier strain.
I have an old Atlas covered hopper that someone converted to body mounted couplers. It required a shim to be put in, which to me seemed to be a lot of effort for nothing. I have a second (identical) Atlas hopper that runs with the standard truck mounted coupler, and it performs equally as well as its body mounted sibling.
truck mounted couplers are very good and i like them because they will couple on a curve. accumates take a little banging together to get them to couple even with microtrains couplers. i use rixpic’s to uncouple and find that the accumates knuckle sometimes gets stuck open and has to be squeezed back together. i’m going to change the accumates to mt’s and i may go with the z scale couplers for more of a scale look.
I guess I will just change the wheels and put in service. I did bodymount couplers on some boxcars and I like it. I do love metal wheelsets, not too worried about height.
You should be able to twist the wheel back into position. Of coarse if you have a standards gage you can double check them all which we should all do, but good luck on finding an n-scale gage.
Most people do not body mount in n-scale but one day I will do this project myself. Sorry no help there.
With your Atlas wheelsets, you may find some that are not square. Send them back to Atlas for replacement. You can tell if they don’t roll down a track & dissapear in the carpet. You may have some fun getting the axles into the dimples. You could give your trucks a roll test to be sure everything is OK before installing on your freight cars.
You could hear a big argument over the value of truck mount vs body mount vs high & low pro wheels. It’s the combination of body & truck mounts that may have fits when backing into tight curves. In HO & larger scales, most couplers are body mounted, just like the prototype.
In Nscale, the usual bodymount method is to tap/drill a 0090 screw into the car floor. MTL’s boxes come predrilled. Some cars require a styrene shim to have something to drill into. MTL sells a tap/die set to drill the holes. Hoppers & tanks tend to need a styrene shim added to drill into. On some locos, you will need to paint the top of the screw so it dosen’t shine.
Some modelers can cut the cost of bodymounts some by cutting the coupler & box off of the truck, then using the coupler/box screwed/ACC’d to the car.