When I look at eBay listings for prewar Lionel and AF, I see comments about the wheels breaking down or disintegrating. Other than being old, what is causing this problem? Where can you find wheel replacements?
Marty
Contamination in the early die cast material. As for wheel replacements - it depends. You can find operating replacements (as opposed to cosmetic) for most of the Lionel wheels. There are some operating replacements for some of the Flyer engines but not others. Trickel makes cosmetic replacements for many of the Flyer wheels. If you don’t care about re-creating the original look of the Flyer engine you can sort of fudge some of the existing operating wheel replacements in order to make some of the trains run but you can’t do this for all of them.
Model Engineering Works also sells repro wheels, but again, for some locos but not others.
Swollen wheels are a related problem. Sometimes the wheels haven’t deterriorated enough to crumble, but they’ve changed enough to cause binding. I’ve had one prewar Flyer loco with that problem, and now I have a prewar Flyer motor with the same problem.
If you want to run the loco, keep the replacement cost of wheels in mind when bidding. You’re probably looking at $25 for a replacement set, and another $15 or so to have them put on, if you don’t have a wheel puller and a press to do the repair yourself.