I am sure somewhere this has been posted at one time, but for the old ‘blue box’ Athearn kits, what is the recommended replacement wheel set? Maybe even the entire truck as well. I resurrected some and the wheels sets have got to be replaced.
Harold
Harold,
For freight cars the most common size is 33" in HO scale thats 0.3789
for passenger cars it’s most commonly 36" which in HO scale is 0.4133
As far as what truck(s) are to be used well there are a lot of variables, for example when was the car built, trucks used on freight cars in the early 1900’s were a lot different then modern trucks used today or even say back in the 50’s or 60’s. What type of car is it a 40’ box car an 80’ box car, an intermodal car or a passenger car, a heavy weight passenger car or a standard sized one etc. etc. You can try a company like Kadee for example who sells wheels and trucks individually or as a complete unit and they may have information that will help you narrow down you rchoices.
You may find the link below very helpful for any questions like this in the future. I have no idea where or how this guy got his information but it’s a great resource.
Harold, if you do some searching on this site you will find this question has been posted and answered many times. You will find the answers will be split 50 50 as to replacing the wheel sets.
Many will say metal wheel sets keep the track cleaner, my self I don’t think so. I have upgraded 200 cars and track still needs to be cleaned about the same as when I ran the stock sets.
I have a lot of Blue box cars and most have been up graded, because it was the thing to do. I still have around 30 with there stock wheels and they do just fine with hundreds of hours on them. Most Blue Box car roll pretty easy as is out of the box.
Your best friend as far as making them roll easy is a Truck Tuner #82828 by Micro-Mark. If you do up grade wheels you should have one anyway.
Are you having any problems with them now? If not I live by the motto “If it is not broken, don’t fix it”.
One thing I don’t like about metal sets if one fouls a turnout it will shut down a DCC system.
Cuda Ken