In an ideal/perfect world with precision bored holes, precision manufactured axles, and precision made bearings, you probably would be right. Are toy trains made this way? Nope. Holes are drilled, not bored or reamed. Axles may be well made, and soft brass bearings may be satisfactory for the use they will get. Castings may have hard and/or soft spots that may affect the pressing in of the bearings. Added together, the bearings would probably distort to some degree as they are pressed in.
In the end, your suggestion would probably work and maybe someone will try it and report the results.
Great thread guys! It has been most helpful. Larry, thanks for the tool tips I bought a reamer and will try that.
CW and Bob, thanks for helping out. The Hobby Horse tool books never mentions that you may need to ream the bearings to size afterwards. I had called Carl Burchett and talked with him about it. He had not seen it before. These are the first bearings I have done.
If reaming bearings was commonly required, I would expect that someone would have put together a kit by now.
Please let us know how everything works out.
I have ordered a reamer. Because this is a learning truck, I decided to press a couple wheels on. I accidentally went a bit too far and the bushings were pushed in deeper too. I had originally left them out further a few thousands to get better wheel to chassis clearance. When the bearings seated all the way in the axles locked up tightly. Even after I removed the wheels the axles would not rotate anymore. It seems that even pressing the bearings a little bit compresses the inner diameter. This is really confusing.
I remember a while back when a certain vendor sold 681 axle bearings to a friend of mine he told him that he would have to ream them out to size after pressing them in. Anyone else done this?
Your posts indicate that the bearings are too oversize for the hole in the truck frame, as my original post suggested. I, (and probably others on this forum also), have never had to ream out bearings after installing them. If you need a lot of force to press the bearings in, then they are very much oversize. Your options include getting bearings from a different vendor (recommended), drilling out the truck frames to accommodate the oversize bearings (NOT recommended), or having bearings custom made for your application. (I made a custom set of bearings for a 681 where the bearing holes in the frame had worn oversize).
To narrow down your problem, please post the exact outside diameter of a new, unused bearing, and the nearest drill size that will fit, even snugly, into the truck frame.
You did not indicate which company supplied the parts. That is just as well.
Everybody makes an error from time to time.
Not that long ago I ordered a dozen worm wheels (gears) from a long established, well known, well respected Lionel parts dealer. They should have all been the same, but I received a mixture of two different styles.
So it is possible that you were sent the wrong bearings.
It is also possible that Lionel made an undocumented change to the bearings somewhere along the lines.
The reamer tool has arrived here already. It will pass through factory installed bearings but will not pass through uninstalled, or installed by me bearings. So the next step is to use the tool as designed and see what happens.
I just used the 188.5 reamer tool and it works beautifully. I actually probably could use a 189.0. So this will solve my problem. Who knows what the bearings I bought actually were for? They could be 671/2020 turbine bearings as well.
Thanks for the help. I may invest in other reamers in the future.
Glad to hear you’ve found a solution. That’s a good point that the bushings might not be the correct ones. I went a similar issue while working on a 681-100 motor. I wanted to replace both front and rear armature bushings, so I ordered the 671M rear bushing that my service manual shows for the 681-100 breakdown.
I didn’t pay any attention until I received the bushing and saw that it was not correct. I’ve never worked with any F3 axle bushings, so I can’t say if there is an issue with mixed up part numbers in that case.
Jim, the dealer I bought from may have not even known if the bearings I bought were REALLY OEM. I get wrong parts frequently from different people. What makes repairing the 681 tough is the Greenberg book does not cover it, only the 671.
The K Line version of the service manual also lacks information on the 681. I had to use the motor breakdown for the 736, which also used the 681-100 motor.