I have several passenger cars that have plastic trucks and wheels. They move OK but not great. I am interested in replacing these trucks and wheels with metal trucks and wheels. I am more interested in the cars running smooth and easy than I am in accurate appearance. I don’t have a lot of money I can put into new tracks and wheels. What trucks and wheels do you recommend? Thanks!
I think I would look into replacing the wheel sets with metal wheels, and use the plastic trucks.
I think total axle length varies between manufacturers, such as Athearn vs. Rivarossi, so you might need to measure what the excisting wheel sets are, and what type of ends they have, and how they fit into the trucks.
I’m not sure how many variations there are, but something to pay attention to when looking for replacements wheels sets.
Mike.
And, I would add that, although the more prototypical .087 width wheel treads look better unless you have almost perfect track work, I use the wider wheels from Kadee.
If you are replacing the trucks, truck gemetry is very important. Some have the king pin centered and some have it offset. Are the couplers part of the truck or are they body mounted? It will cause problems if you mix the two at a particular coupling.
Model manufactures tend to cheat the position of the trucks in order to use 18" curves. The clser they are to the middle the tighter curve a car can negotiate, but the problem is then moved to the ends of the cars which may swing so far apart as to cause issues with the car that it is coupled to.
LION has not examined every car on the planed, but him has many Riverossi cars (Think 1970s vintage) that have truck mounted couplers, Kadee has kits to work with these, and I have used them on my entire fleet.
LION kept the plastic trucks and just replaced the wheels. Keeps the geometry simple.
Wheel size then becomes an issue. Some manufactures cheat down on the wheel size so that where you would expect a 36" wheel you will find a 33" or a non-standard wheel size. Those older Riverossi’s had cookee-cutter wheels. Those need to go in any event.
Some pax car wheel sets have plastic wheels on metal axels, an all metal wheel set may present electrical problems especially if you are trying to light the cars. Which way you mount the wheels is important.
ROAR
When I was in N scale… way back in the 1980s and 1990s… MicroTrains did not make passenger cars, but they made generic “4 wheel” and “6 wheel” passenger car trucks.
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These were great, and they made every passenger car by Bachmann, Con Cor, and Rivarossi actually run really good. They came with all kinds of adapters to make them work.
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It would be great if Kadee would do the same thing in HO scale. I, like the OP, would cheerfully accept a compromise “generic” passenger car truck that really worked well in exchange for prototype specific detailing.
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Trucks, wheels, couplers, and track all need to be reliable over having fine detail.
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-Kevin
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i agree with Mike. Try the metal wheelsets first. About $70 per 100 at MBKlein. That should show a marked improvment and changing trucks may not be necessary.
I second the motion on keeping the plastic trucks especially if they were made for use with that particular car. If you don’t have one, now is the time to invest in a TruckTuner which fits into the bearings of a plastic truck and smooths out the bearing so wheels - including perhaps your original plastic wheels - will roll much better. I regard the TruckTuner as step one to address poor-rolling cars. But metal wheels have other advantages.
There are some side effects of a wheel change. LION mentioned that Rivarossi/AHM/IHC passenger cars had undersized wheels and oversized flanges. The wheels are closer to 30" which is grossly undersized. (IHC used to sell metal wheel replacements for their passenger cars and they roll well as I recall, BUT I believe they are the same undersized 30". Still you might consider them if you can find them.)
Replacing them with accurate metal 36" wheels has several effects.
First of all it raises the car and raises the couplers whether they are body mounted or “talgo”/truck mounted. There may be issues there.
Second, the Rivarossi/AHM trucks (not sure about IHC) had cast on brake shoes which rub against the wheel tread of a 36" wheel (and perhaps even of a 33" wheel which is smaller than scale but a common compromise with AHM cars). The brake shoes can be carefully filed or sanded down (I used a round file) so they do not rub on the wheel tread but this is trial and error. Some guys clip them off but I regard them as a nice bit of detail and try to preserve them when I can.
Third, now may be the time when you think of lighting the car interior with track power so there may be more work involved in this conversion than any of us are talking about.
Dave Nelson
Hello All,
Complete replacement can be expensive.
Check out this thread…One-Piece Bettendorf Frames
You did not mention whether the trucks are 4- or 6-axel.
As has been mentioned you might consider keeping the trucks and just replace the plastic wheels with metal ones.
Most passenger cars have 36-inch (scale) wheels rather than the 33-inch (scale) found on most freight cars and other rolling stock.
A quick search on eBay shows 24 PCS 36" Metal Wheels (from China) $22.99 w/free shipping.
I would highly recommend getting a HO Truck Tuning Tool from Micro-Mark. This tool faces the insides of the truck frames. I bought one and it has revived many a slow moving pair of trucks.
A pair of HO Truck Spreading Pliers would be a handy item too depending on how many sets of wheels you are replacing.
Hope this helps.
Some years ago our club had all of us change to Intermountain machined metal wheels. We would keep a bag of one hundred on hand and a Micro Mark truck tuner. A slight touch up from the tuner.
We prefered them over the black Kadee sintered wheels. Compressed metal powder which is ok. They do sell.
Rich
Actually the plastic trucks probably will end up rolling better than what you’d have with metal trucks. With metal trucks, you have metal-on-metal (metal axles / metal trucks) which would normally mean you’d need to oil them every so often - just like real railroads had to do with ‘friction’ wheels/trucks. Plastic is ‘slippery’ and the metal axles will spin more freely inside them.
Fantastic to read why I keep using plastic trucks and metal wheels. Here I am thinking to save just money. I would keep the plastic trucks and install metal wheels. I did that on nearly all the cars.
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Again, this old piece of misinformation has popped up.
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Kadee wheels are not sintered or made out of powdered material.
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There is a lot more to a truck/wheel assembly then just free rolling. They also need to traverse maybe-less-than-perfect track, track through turnouts and crossings, STAY ON THE RAILS, be readily available, have excellent quality control, and provide maintnenance free/trouble free operation.
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For all I have found, the good old Kadee sprung trucks with metal wheels on plastic axles are the best all-around product on the market.
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-Kevin
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A lot depends on the type of plastic used. Nowadays, most plastic trucks are made from hard engineering-type plastic, such as Delrin. While it doesn’t take paint all that well (it is paintable, but the paint adherence is iffy if the trucks are handled a lot), it’s otherwise very durable. Because of its hardness, it’s a good choice for trucks, and, in my opinion, better than most metal trucks as far as rolling qualities and longevity are concerned.
Rivarossi, for one, used a softer plastic on their passenger car trucks, and while they were nicely detailed and durable enough for the very underweight rolling stock riding on them, they deteriorated rather quickly if the modeller added too much weight to the cars (ask me how I learned that). Rivarossi passenger car wheels, in plastic or metal, were grossly undersize, but could be replaced fairly easily using Kadee 36" metal wheels on plastic axles.
While I have quite a few (too many) cars with metal wheels, I prefer Delrin plastic wheels to metal ones, preferably on steel or brass axles.
It’s my feeling that metal wheels are erroneously marketed as having better rolling qualities when in fact the wheel material has little bearing (no pun itended) on rolling qualities.
However, the majority of current-day offerings of metal wheelsets do have better axle ends than those on older plastic wheelsets, and because different manufacturers’ trucks require axles of different lengths, the modeller can suit the replacement wheelsets’ axle-length to the trucks which they’re using - one size definitely does not fit all.
I would have preferred to have seen someone offering replacement axles, in lengths and tip profiles to fit the sideframes of
I would add another vote for replacing the plastic wheelsets with metal ones, and getting a Truck Tuner to use during the replacement. I’ve done this to a lot of freight cars and the cars roll so well that I have needed to fix sidings and uncoupling magnets to compensate better for runaways.
I’ve even replaced metal trucks with plastic ones in this process.
Hello All,
A slightly different perspective…Sprung vs. un-sprung trucks…performance gains or losses over looks? Your thoughts???
I ended up using CA on one side of the sprung trucks to “lock out” one side after this thread.
Next I changed from Kadee sprung trucks to their HGC split bolster type. Still pretty expensive for 30-40 pieces of rolling stock at $10.25 per car.
Then…One-Piece Bettendorf frames
I am seriously considering converting my fleet of hoppers (more than 30 cars) over to the Accurail/Intermountain truck/wheel combination.
That would free up all the Kadee’s for other applications.
Hope this helps.
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Anyway… Getting back to the OP’s dillema of poorly performing passenger car trucks…
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I would like to know what brand of passenger car he is using. We all seemed to assume it was AHM/Rivarossi/IHC, but it could be something else entirely.
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-Kevin
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Hello All,
Absolutly!
…And are they two- or three-axle trucks?
Unfortunately Kadee doesn’t make a three axle truck so refurbishing the existing three-axle trucks and upgrading with metal wheels would make more sense and save money.
Hope this helps.
I have no experience messing with passenger car trucks/wheels, but I do do alot of freight cars. I usually keep the plastic trucks but add metal couplers to the cars. In HO I have primarily used Intermountain wheels, and in N Atlas wheels. I don’t know if Intermountain does N scale stuff, i’d assume so, but I happened to have Atlas ones around when I rewheeled my N fleet. I really like Intermountain stuff, but I recommend you buy them in bulk. They get expensive quick if you by a bunch of 12 packs!
Good luck!
Wow! What great comments I have received! I appreciate every comment and will take them to heart. I should have included this information in my original question, but failed to do so. I have a HO scale Bachmann 6 Unit Deluxe Passenger Car Set, Series Two, item #43-1291. The cars are two axels per truck. I am pulling these cars with a MTH J Class engine. I have trouble going up a three percent grade. The engine wheels seem to spin a little. These cars roll OK but not great. In addition to making sure the track is smooth on the grade, I thought new wheels and trucks would help. From what I am hearing, I should probably keep the trucks and switch over to metal wheels.
I agree with Dave, some wheelsets are made for certain cars, so try to keep the originals. My Athearn cars have electric pick up if desired. To replace the wheelsets you’d have to find ones with the same configuration. I had to be careful when I used the truck tuner to return the wheelsets in each truck in the correct orientation.
Purchase a truck tuner, if you don’t have one, it’s a good investment as it can be used on all your rolling stock. Use that first and see if the rolling quality doesn’t improve markedly. Mine did.
Good luck,
Richard