Loose Accurail Truck Mounting Pins

[Isambard]

The Accurail truck pin design appears to depend on friction fit to hold the pin place. I have found that in some cases, to allow the truck to swing freely the pin cannot be pressed in fully. The pin may have a tendency to fall out, as happened last night in a club session, leading to a truck going astray on a series 4100 box car, resulting in a sprawl of derailed box cars. Not only embarrassing but a serious loss of revenue and additional cost to my Grizzly Northern Railway!
What ingenious solutions do other railroaders have? Do I hear replace with screws?

[Anonymous]

Tap & Drill, install 2-56s are a solution.

http://www.kadee.com/htmbord/page164.htm

What I have done was install cotton fiber strands from a cotton ball/q-tip in the hole and then
re-install the pin. WORKS!

[Hudsonmike]

I always throw out those pins and I glue in a piece of styrene and
install screws
Mike

[ClinchValleySD40]

Don't throw the pin away. Glue it in the hole (without the trucks). After it is completely dry, shave it off even with the bolster and now the hole is filled and ready to be drilled and tapped for a screw.

[AntonioFP45]

Hey guys,

Don't forget to e-mail Accurail and let them know of the problem. Only takes a minute!
It's important for manufacturers to see and hear "feedback" from a defect. Enough complaints and product improvments will be made!

10-4

[Anonymous]

You can use a razor saw to cut a slit in the pin from the end to the head. Take a piece of styrene just a tad thicker than the slit and cut to the width of the pin. Place the styrene in the slit and pu***he pin into place. The pin will be a force fit, but if you are careful, you can adjust it so the truck is not held too tightly against the bolster. Granted, a small self tapping screw will work just as well, but I do not always have the right screw in stock at the time I need it.

Tom

[michealfarley]

I've found that you can tap the hole for 2-56 without glueing and redrilling the pin. I think Dennis may have designed the hole that size for a reason..........

[nfmisso]

Hey Guys;

As Michael says you can tap the hole with a #2-56 tap without any drilling.

Accurail designed it this way. The pin is sufficient for the vast majority of thier customers, ahd keeps the costs in line. They mold thier own plastic, so the pins are practically free. Putting in screws would greatly increase thier overhead, driving the cost of thier kits up far more than the price of a couple of screws. Thus they made the descision to do it this way to save us all $$.

[Anonymous]

I had a bunch of Athearn screws left of some vluebox kits. i used those to mount the trucks on my accurail 40ft boxcars. I think it workd fine.

[CBQ_Guy]

A quick fix may be to just glue in the pin with a bit of rubber cement.

[Anonymous]

No, No, NO, don't glue the pins in, unless to re-bore the hole. Sooner or later, you will want to work on the car and being able to remove the trucks will be an asset or a must. Gluing in will make this difficult/impossible. Sorry CBQ_GUY, don't mean to rain on your parade, I just think there have been many better ways mentioned, to fix this problem, than your suggestion!

[CBQ_Guy]

QUOTE: Originally posted by deschane

No, No, NO, don't glue the pins in, unless to re-bore the hole. Sooner or later, you will want to work on the car and being able to remove the trucks will be an asset or a must. Gluing in will make this difficult/impossible. Sorry CBQ_GUY, don't mean to rain on your parade, I just think there have been many better ways mentioned, to fix this problem, than your suggestion!

I agree, however that's why I called it a "quick fix" and suggested using "rubber" cement as it's easily removeable. It's a bit stronger than say, a post-it type cement. It should hold in operation, but you will be able to remove the pin VERY easily in the future, too.

Sometimes I use this to hold cork roadbed in place. If I come back later and don't like the look, I can peel it up and re-position it with a couple push pins and it's still tacky.

[preceng]

Had the same problem. The above solutions are best, but I have also fixed the problem by squashing (mushrooming - is that a word?) the ends (slightly) with pliers.

[cacole]

I have used various items to make the Accurail truck pin fit into the hole tighter, such as a piece of paper. MDC's Roundhouse kits are sometimes problematic, too. I recently assembled a Roundhouse kit where the screws they provided for fastening the trucks were way too small and would just fall out of the hole. I don't know if it was a case of someone at the factory including the wrong sized screws or if every one of their kits of that particular model had the wrong screws included. I always keep a stock of variious sizes of screws and nuts handy for just such cases.