Reclaiming Damaged or Generally Unacceptable Coach Wheels

[John Fitton]

The last few replies contain some very useful ideas. I like the yellow spot identification for wheel sets which have been gauged and glued. This reminds of the days when Rolls Royce's were built properly and the wheels would be X-rayed and painted with a small white dot if they passed.

I also am right on with Tim's approach regarding derailments, and the no compromise approach.

I hadn't thought of separating out the wheels from the axles though. If at least one wheel can be salvaged it reduces the loss by 50%.

Does anyone know what type of Loctite Ultrascale use for securing the wheels on axles?

John

[Philip Hall]

John, I don't know if any retainer is used on the coach wheels. Best way would be to email David Rogers direct and ask him.

Philip

[Alan Turner]

AG do not use any retainer other than friction.

Regards

Alan

[Colin Parks]

With my very limited experience of P4 modelling, the Ultrascale wheels that I have fitted to stock have always been true and secure - even when removing the wheels and re-fitting on the axles Black Beetle motorised bogie. Exactoscale wheels are different matter. Several years back, the wheels seemed OK, both 12mm 3-hole and 14mm disc. I even made a little jig to facilitate mounting the wheels on their axles and securing with Loctite 603. The 14mm wheels went under a 4 SUB that had been converted to P4 and seems to stay on the track (cf. S4News 195). Those 14mm wheels ran true, as did the few wagons, despite having heard that Exactoscale 12mm wagon wheels were inconsistent.

However, on assembling a more recently purchased batch of 14mm to convert another EMU, some wheels were found to be unacceptably wobbly. They were concentric to the axle but not running true in the vertical plane (if that makes sense), thus giving an inconsistent back to back measurement - even I know that this is a recipe for disaster on pointwork. The jig used for assembly had not been altered or damaged, so I can only assume that there must have been some wear in the Exactoscale tooling over the years. Their design is such that all three wheel components have to be absolutely true in the manufacturing and assembly process, otherwise there is little chance of success when it comes to mounting them on the axles.

I rather like the Exactoscale range of wheels for their authentic look(and scale width tyres), which win out over Ultrascale on that basis. However, for me, getting it 'all right' starts with things staying on the track- everything counts for nothing unless that is achieved, so future purchases of wheels will be from Ultrascale whenever possible.

[Crepello]

That's a rather sad story. Exactoscale "doing a Rover" ?

[Colin Parks]

Rover?! Gosh, did I make it sound that bad?

Well, it is not meant to be a 'sad story' Crepello, but in P4, the tolerances are so fine that small errors here and there quickly compound to the point of unacceptability. To balance what I have previously said about wheels, my experience of 00 ones was even worse: some wheels were eccentric in the extreme. Worst of all were some Romford 14mm disc wheels which were built into some Kirk bogies, with the wheels impossible to remove once assembled without major damage and around half the wheels wobbled terribly.

For the sake of even more balance, I can say that I have had no issues at all with Exactoscale track components, which have always been of the best quality in my (limited) experience.

Colin