As a matter of fact I am following an old Jim Six article and making a usefull car out of an old Tyco-Mantua Gon. I got rid of the old cast underframe and substituted an Athearn underframe and trucks I had left over from another project. I also carved off the hand grabs and installed new wire ones, all that is left is paint and decals. Of course the KD’s went in the Athearn Coupler Boxes.
Rick
Like retsignalmtr, I have a lot of old Mantua/Tyco cars with Talgo trucks. I’m particularly fond of my operating clamshell hoppers. I find it quite easy to remove the trucks and cut off the coupler bracket with a Dremel cutting wheel. Then, I take a Kadee plastic draft gear box (#232, lots of 'em for a couple of dollars) and mark the point on the car where the mounting hole is on each end. A quick hit with a drill and 2-56 tap, and I’m ready to mount the coupler in the box. I cut the little “ears” off the draft gear boxes, because they interfere with the truck rotation.
So far, I’ve just been replacing the trucks with the plastic wheels. On a few other cars, I’ve re-ground the trucks with a conical Dremel bit and put in new wheelsets.
After doing a few of these, I find it takes no more than about 10 minutes to do the whole coupler conversion on one of these. Fortunately, the car base height is almost exactly right, and the couplers need very little adjustment once they are mounted.