A few weeks ago, I bought a truck tuner from Micro Mark as part of a project to fine tune my rolling stock, both passenger cars and freight cars.
But, now I have become obsessed with taking a plastic truck with two Intermountain wheel sets, after using the truck tuner to test my track, and rolling it down the track to find flaws. When the wheelsets are sufficiently free rolling after using the truck tuner, I find that with a firm shove, the truck will roll along 30 or more feet of track including curves and over turnouts.
I am using this truck as a “wheel test” to find flaws in my track work. I am finding a few spots where the truck will derail, especially on curves. The truck will derail where locos and rolling stock won’t. My feeling is that if the track work is perfect, the truck shouldn’t derail. If the truck does derail, the track needs to be relaid.
I’m not so sure I’d replace track solely on the basis of a free rolling truck derailing. I use trucks to test the alignment of track and turnouts but I always have a little pressure on the truck when doing this. Just my 2Cents…
Put two of those free-rolling freshly tuned trucks under a slightly underweight box car, reefer or whatever and roll IT down the track. If that car derails, check the track.
Note that I did not say re-lay. You may need nothing more than a gentle laying on of a file or abrasive to remove an all-but-invisible unevenness.
My tester of choice is the exact opposite - a train of cars with trapezoidal or pizza-cutter flanges, long wheelbases and underweight cars, pulled by a loco with a touchy pilot truck and a tender with misaligned axles. If that can run through in both directions, both forward and reverse, at twice track speed, nothing I have in regular service will EVER derail.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with trackwork as bulletproof as I can make it)
You’re obsessed with truck tuning? First I’ve heard of that one, doesn’t sound like much fun! LOL
But yes, I’ve actually tried running just the truck to test track, and it can help detect bad trackwork. But I also use my most picky locomotives also. If my Challenger or Veranda can make it through without derails, then trackwork is solid.
I use my most finnicky freight car and my most finnicky locomotive. Right now, the tender on a BLI Hybrid Union Pacific 2-10-2 is a good test for rails being even across any given point on a curve, and a similar test would be either of the two Genesis SD-75M’s. I have had to wet the ballast on curves, and then pry up the outer rail enough to jam more grains of ballast under the ties to raise the outer rails enough to hold the flanges on the outer wheels on those items.
I also send a passenger car, a long one, down the rails and listen for click-clicks and watch for lurching or tilting. If I see or hear much, I note the spot and go back with Opti-visor for a good look. Sometimes my solder is a bit bulky, or one rail end is just a hair higher than the one it meets.
I’m going out of town for a few days but when I get back I’ll try the truck test you described. It does sound interesting and I’m curious as to what I’ll find----probably something I don’t want to find. [:-^]
But like a few others here, I run an old Mantua Mikado all around the layout pulling a scratch built light weight flat car. If that makes it around, frontwards and backwards, at a moderate speed then I’m pretty sure everything else I have will run fine. This old Mantua is of the 1970 vintage and it still runs reasonably well, even at slow speeds but it is a beast and fun to see.
The truck tuner is a fantastic “tool” especially for a truck that is giving you troubles, however, I wouldn’t just spin it around on a perfectly excellent casting that has nohing wrong w/ it. If you install your favorite choice of metal wheelset and it is free rolling I stop there. The ideal perfect finish inside the truck is far smoother that you can make it from a cutting of the tool.
And I agree that a free rolling truck only with no weight shouldn’t be the only test of the trackwork. Not having any weight it may not always track as you expect. Especially on turnouts.
Will do…due back in town on Sunday and it probably won’t be until next Monday or Tuesday when I’ll be able to perform the test. Visiting my daughter in Sioux Falls, should be a fun trip.
I agree. If the car is free rolling, I do not use the truck tuner on it.
I will say this about the “wheel test”. If the truck does not derail over a stretch of track, nothing will derail over that same stretch of track. If the truck does derail, however, there is a potential problem at that spot which ought to be marked or recorded for future, if not immediate, attention.
My old layout was basically a double oval 8x12. A GOOD truck and wheelset, I could shove hard enough to get a loop and a half out of (much faster is just left the rails at the first curve). Hard to do with a car, even with the weight low they woudl tend to roll off the curves like a Lionel loco, but plain trucks with metal wheels, it was fun to zip them around and see how far they’d go.
I don;t just automatically use the truck tuner tool, I stick a wheelset in the truck and spin it, if it keeps on going by itself, it’s good, if it stops quickly, out comes the tool. Usually if once axle needs the tool to fix it, others on the same truck need it as well (old mold? Cooled too quickly and left flash? Not sure, but over all the cars I’ve swapped plastic for metal wheels, this is the typical pattern).
Gidday, Using the “tuned truck” is a good idea but I wouldn’t use it as a basis for relaying track without doing some other tests, ie; sighting the track with the Mk1 eyeball, checking track gauge with the NMRA gauge and running my loco with the “delicate” pilot over the area in question. However as you have said that there have been other glitches at the same places then I wish you “Happy track relaying”.
As for free rolling cars if mine will start rolling from a standing start on a 2% grad then I’m happy.
Do you think the truck tuner might have almost too steep of an angle for Intermountain axle points allowing the truck to sit a little low on the axle? I like it a lot for Jaybee axle points.
We use a 3 axle locomotive truck in finding track/turnout flaws in the same way you do a two axle truck. This truck is one of the Athearn Genesis trucks we replaced on a SD70. With the middle axle set it is more sensitive to alignments. We also tighten up trucks a little on a long flat car and run it around to find areas that may not have gradual enough of transitions from flat to super elevated curves and from flat to rising/falling grade transitions.
I bought a Micro Mark Truck Tuner about a month ago. I had been given a Rapido coach as a gift and the wheels were so bad it wouldn’t have hit the floor if it fell off the bench. I used the tuner and WOW! What a difference. I just look at it now and it starts to roll. I do wonder if the tuner is suitable for all axles and/or trucks? Any thoughts?
I bought the truck tuner because of the Rapido passenger cars. They are wonderful cars, but those trucks are way to tight. The Micro Mark truck tuner really frees up the wheelsets.
I have used the truck tuner on a whole bunch of passenger cars from different manufacturers and a whole bunch of freight cars from at least 6 different manufacturers. It works equally well on all types of trucks.
It’s amazing the inconsistency in the quality control on those trucks. I have eleven Rapido cars and every one of them rolls differently.
My BLI 2-10-4 could not pull all eleven cars up my long 2% grade with that one really bad car in the mix. Since I tuned it, all eleven cars are up and over the pass with ease.
I will be giving every one of them a good look and tune down the road.
I had the same experience you did. I recently purchased 13 Rapido passenger cars in three different road names, but I eventually ran them all in one consist. When a car would derail, the one behind or ahead of it would be pulled off the track as well. So I would pull both cars out of the consist and continue running the remaining cars while tuning the connecting trucks on the two cars pulled out of the consist. I would then put them back in the consist and pull out the next two offenders. I did this over a period of hours until I got the 13-car consist running flawlessly.