Good idea and proceeded to do just that using the old paper towel soaked in alcohol trick. They were dirty wheels indeed and my cleaning method was so good that it tore the rubber traction tires right off on both engines. So it is Rapidos fault.[(-D]
I thought I would take the opportunity to change out the traction tires to the regular wheels that came with the loco to see how the engine would handle my version of the Rogers Pass in the Canadian Rockies without the traction tires. This is where the trouble started.
To make a long horrific story even longer, I ended up not being able to get the wheels back to where they belonged and in the process ended up with all the wheels out of alignment.
2850 bad⊠2861 good
So should I start by removing all the linkage from the two most rear wheelsets and try to align those properly with the front set or take the whole works off (which scares me at this point as I am not sure how to do this) or I will follow the lead of those in the know?
Or should I gather up the pieces and send them back to Rapido?
I will never become a master locomotive rebuilder if I donât start somewhere, so here is my chance.[:^)][:-^][(-D]
[tup][tup] for a Clear Title to the thread. Instead of just being a cute title like:
âI Am An Idiotâ it attracts everyone who knows how to do this.
I am in the category of: I would like to know this. When I donât know what Iâm doing, I take a lot of pictures. But surely this ought to be something that doesnât require a trip back to the factory.
Is the axle with the traction tires the geared axle? If so, looks liek you just have it off by a tooth. Hopefully you did NOT twist any wheels in their axles, or the quarter is going to be off and you will need more than just a wrench to fix that.
It looks liek all you need to do is disconnect the rid on the last driver, and pull them out and put them back in about a tooth clockwise, with the pin about where it is on the other two drivers. If it won;t go exactly, put it a bit further ahead (clockwise, looking at the same side as the photos) and turn the other two clockwise a bit to get the rod to line up so you can put the screw back in.
As long as you didnât twist the drives in the axle, you ge tone side, the other side should line up. If anything, the other two drivers should be ahead of the the third one, you can always turn them back slightly.
Itâs easier to fiddle with it than to describe it. You might even be able to unbind it by disconnecting just one side, then lining it all up and putting the side you disconnected back on.
Randy, all three wheelsets are geared and I had all three out trying to fix the thing. I think the first step may be to disconnect the side rods of the back two wheelsets and start from there. Do you think I can get away with just disconnecting one side of the rods?
I had them in and out several times to no avail and the front wheelset is the most crooked so that is why I am thinking of disconnecting the side rods and starting there. What do you think?
If replacing the wheels with traction tires involved removing the wheels from the axles and re-installing the non-traction-tire ones, youâll need to re-quarter the out-of-sync drivers. I have NWSLâs âQuartererâ, but in most cases have found that itâs easier and just as accurate doing it âby-eyeâ.
To do so, remove the out-of-sync wheels set(s), then line up the ones remaining with the loco so that the counterweights on one side are all in a horizontal postion at the top or bottom of their rotation or likewise vertical at the front or rear of their rotation. The counterweights on the other side, if the wheelsâ position hasnât been altered, should be 90Âș to those on the other side.
Choose one side of the wheelset that requires quartering to match the other wheelsâ position on the same side of the loco, then use the position of the counterweights on the other side of the locomotive to reset the quarter of the other wheel to 90Âș from its counterpart.
Temporarily replace the re-quartered axle in its appropriate place, line up the wheel used as the starting point on the same side of the locomotive, then check to see if the re-quartered wheelâs counterweight matches those on the other side of the loco. If necessary, re-adjust as needed.
While it may sound obvious, make sure that the wheels thus re-quartered go on the same side as that from which they were taken - itâs probably not a big deal if both sides are powered, but on older locos, improper orientation of insulated and non-insulated drivers will cause a short.
Those instructions are pretty clear Wayne thanks. Should I remove the side rods on all wheelsets or just the back two sets, also will I have to remove the rods on both sides or just one side to be able to adjust things properly?
My thinking is I should be able to âsquare upâ the front set with the rods still attached to those only.
If all 3 sets are geared, then it becomes a matter of having it all line sup when you drop them in, so they engage the gears in the proper position. I think you might get away with just disconnecting one side, but it might be overall easier if you disconnect both sides.
As Wayne and I both said - if you had to tek the wheels off the exles, or twisted them then the quarting it probably off and youâll have to so some more adjusting to get them all correct. But if all you did was pull off a wheelset complete witht he exle and swap in a different one, they shoudl line up. Just have to jiggle things around so when the slide up into place, one doesnât skip a tooth forward or backward on the gear and get it crooked again.
Whether the new driver sets without traction tires are simple drop-in wheelsets, or are wheels which need to be pressed onto axles, Iâd do them one axle at a time, disconnecting any siderods for only the set on which youâre working.
As Randy mentions ready-to-use (already quartered) wheelsets can simply be dropped into place, then lifted slightly, if necessary, to clear the gears, in order to allow rotating them to get the counterweights aligned as I mentioned earlier.
I will add that on one of my PCM Reading T1s (thankfully they came with the plain drivers installed, the traction tire set were int he box) had a turned bearing in the front axle. When I popped out just that axle (leaving the rods attached), getting it to slide back in the right way took some fiddling - it wanted to go in with the rods the wrong way. But after fiddling with it a few times, I was able to get the wheelset to drop in with the cranks and thus the rods lines up correctly and itâs been fine ever since.
From a given position in the rotation, there are two ways an axle with the rods attached can drop in - the right way, and with the crank facing the opposite way at an equal angle. TYhe trick is getting it to drop in the right way. It may help to lower the wheels in with the axle at an angle, not perpendicular to the frame. That will allow the rod to get past the binding pointand then as the wheels slide in the last little bit, the rod will pull the wheel in the right way.
Well, I have had that engine apart and back together more times than I can count today ( I ran out of fingers and toes) First thing I discovered and have learned, the bearings/bushings can move along the axle and not sit right causing binding. You have to pay close attention to this. Next, when putting the screws back in to hold the rods on, barely snug causes the loco to not want to move. Once I discovered this and kept them loose I started to make real progress. It is still not perfect but I am almost there.
I went from [sigh] to actually start to enjoy the challenge as I got used to working on the thing. I am actually thinking Canada Post may not get my $ this time.
If the drivers are driven by the gears, and not a single bull gear and side-rods like other steam engines, I would try to get the engine working perfectly without the side-rods, and add the siderods and valve linkages after I got the drive train to work perfectly.
Please let us know what happens - that drive arrangement is one of reasons why I did not get that loco⊠I battled with a gear-driven loco with side rods in the past and it was a pain. But i did win that battle.
If I had wanted that locomotive, the drive system wouldâve been the deal clincherâŠperhaps itâs a good thing it wasnât a locomotive in which I otherwise had any interest.
I am not an expert in this. I have seen a few European engines with these gears for steam engines, so perhaps Ulrich can comment here.
It sounds like one set of drivers is out of quarter. I would remove the siderods and valve gear carefully and tackle the quartering using Wayneâs approach. I too do it by eye - itâs more important to have them all at the same angle than having one at exactly 45 degree angle. If I understand the theory correctly, your engine should the be able to run without the siderods. Once you get the quartering and gear arrangement working perfectly, then you can add the siderods and the valve gear (that are there just for the show, I think). Anyway, thatâs how I fixed an O scale Pola switcher that had gears and siderods.
Hopefully, a real expert will chime in to correct or confirm.
I really donât think anything is out of quarter. Let me try again. In the top pic, it looks like the rear driver has the rod, for want of a better term, snapped over centr like an over center spring. THe crank flipped rearward when those drivers were seated, instead of going forward. Itâs pretty much what would happen with the rods in that position if the drivers were set down into the bearings - the rod canât shorten itself to go straight in, so it partially rotated the drivers just enough so the axle could slide in, but now itâs leaning the wrong way.
This can be fiddly to get together, but by carefully doing it, it can go the way its supposed to. It will never just âfallâ in without some pressure. The alternative is removing the rod which should allow freedom to place the drivers with the crank positioned exactly where it needs to be, and then reconnect the rod. One tooth off might not seem like much, but it wonât fit if itâs so much as one tooth too forward or too back.
It would be easier if they werenât all geared, but other than that, I see no real negative about driving all 3 axles instead of relying on the rods.
Brent, before everything went belly-up yesterday, and after you posted your twin photos showing the two locos with their valve gear, I posted something like the following:
Loosen the small screw holding the eccentric crank in place on the loco and rotate the arm about 15 deg clockwiseâŠleft. Retighten, and it now looks like 2160. Iâm assuming you have the cranks all in the same angle and that the engine runs and doesnât bind because the cranks are all spaced evenly.
Do you think the eccentric crank could cause binding or is it there just for show? The wheelsets seem to have a bit of play in them now and the engine is oh so close to running normally. I am thinking a one more tooth realignment may do the trick.
If you look at the photo, the wheels of the two locos are not in the same position so that is why the eccentric crank shows differently.
If you click on the photo twice you can really blow it up. Right now my thinking is wheelset #3 1 click clockwise, or wheelset #2, 1 click anti-clockwise. Iâm phoning a friend here.[(-D]
Okay, you are right. My mind told me you had them both the same, so the eccentric stood out to me.
A locomotive with side-rods should run without a drive-train connected to the axle gears if you push it back and forth by hand. No binding if the quartering is correct. Without the rods in place, it should run like a diesel model. So, binding, if itâs there, and not due to a bit of grit between the gears, hidden in the lube, or not due to a split gear, and the rods arenât making contact with anything as they cycle, must be due to quartering/alignment of the various cranks. In that case, I would continue to fiddle with the gear meshing in the right place.
I just cleaned, lubed, and reassembled an older brass-work chime clock. It took some experimenting to get the gears aligned so that the thing would chime correctly. But, I finally got it about the 15th time.
And yes, the valve gear, minus the two rods on each side, are inconsequential to the running of the locomotive. Theyâll look funny if theyâre not constructed properly, but thereâs no reason they shouldnât thrash and churn like they were installed ânormallyâ.
