I have 3 older cars that have the “Varney” name stamped into the bottom of the frame. They have the horn and hook style coupler and the coupler box itself is actually part of the frame, molded right in. I pried off the box cover and installed some EZ mate couplers and glued the cover back on but the couplers are too low by about an 1/8th inch or so… maybe not quite that much. Is there a way to fix that with some kind of shim and how would I do it since the box itself is part of the frame and cannot be easily removed? The only way I could think of is to cut a shim that fits inside the box with a hole in the shim that would go over the little register pin.
Thanks,
Jarrell
If the trucks are removable, add shims/washers on top of the bolster to raise the whole car the requried amount. Otherwise cut off the coupler boxes and use Kadee coupler boxes shimmed to the proper height.
Bob Boudreau
Jarrell,
At the Kadee Web site, Varney cars are included among the .pdf file conversion instructions:
ROLLING STOCK
Varney Freight Cars (Metal) (pdf)
Varney Freight Cars (Plastic) (pdf)
Varney Ore Cars (pdf)
The Web site URL is:
http://www.kadee.com
Bob
NMRA Life 0543
Bob, shimming the bolsters sounds like the easier way to go. For some reason (I haven’t measured them) the coupler boxes seem to be bigger, or thicker somehow, allowing for more up and down motion of the new couplers. I was just looking at them on the track and I can gently push down on them (or pull up) to get them the right height. They’re getting to be more trouble than they’re worth!
Thanks for the suggestion though!
Jarrell
Thanks Bob, I’ll check it out. I hate to chuck the cars, they’re old and are getting a nice used and worn look to them!
Jarrell
Way back when, I used the Kadee #4 (it was the K4 or MK4 then), the one with the coil spring and two ears in the coupler box, on Varney plastic cars. They had a very small pin in the coupler box, not the big post that the #5 use. (or K10 as it was then!)
An eighth of an inch sounds like an awful discrepancy!
I’ve got about six or seven old Varney cars that I wouldn’t part with under threat of bombardment, LOL! They’re the old metal ones, and while there is slop in the coupler boxes (I replaced the couplers with Kadees), a Kadee insulated shim under the truck bolsters raises them right up to the correct coupler height. Don’t get rid of them, just shim the trucks. They may not be up to current car detail standards, but with new trucks, metal wheelsets and a little added weight, they’ll roll just as nice. And their shorter height (boxcars) makes for a nice variation when you’re running them in a train. I like to run mine and remember what ‘state of the art’ was back in the 'fifties.
Tom [8D][8D]
jacon12,
I, too, have several Varney cars that have been converted to Kadee couplers. I am trying to keep the cars as low as possible and therefore shim the truck kingpins as a last resort. Kadee has undershank couplers that you might try (the drawbar connects to the coupler head at the bottom of the coupler rather than in the middle) but I don’t remember using those. You might try shimming the coupler in the coupler box, using the Kadee shims on the centering post of the coupler box and trimming off the sides of the Kadee shim so that it fits nicely in the box. If there is a lot of “slop” in the coupler, as mentioned in one of the other posts above, this will cure that, too.
I have a few old Crown cars that have a coupler box that has the centering post through the box cover, then flared by a hot instrument. I have found that I can carefully “straighten” the flared plastic and remove the cover, replace the couplers, and re-flare the plastic - once! But the cars look real good with the proper knuckle coupler.
Good Luck,
Mark C.