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Tom, "I use Kadees on everything. I started that quite a long time ago, based on the rolling quality of them compared to what came with the kits I was building." You replace the trucks with Kadee's. Did you choose Kadee's for price, quaility or Kadee's reputation? <hr noshade size="1">kbfcsme, "The stock ones wont hold the track unless the car is carrying bricks! They all seem to have a slight twist in them, so out they go!" Two thoughts here. First, I read a lot on the forum where folks have issues with derailments and I have wondered if warpped/twisted trucks could be part of the problem. Yes, track should be laid flat, but if it has a slight dip and a truck has one wheel that is slightly higher, then wouldn't it stand to reason it would be more likely to derail? Example using HO specs (most tabletop scales are within thousandths of an inch the same). NMRA HO wheel flange standard shows the flange height at .028. If the wheel is up by .010 and the track sags by .010 (most 3x5 card stock is .010) then there is only .008 of the flange left to hold/guide the wheel on the track. It would seem to me that any slight wobble of the car at this point could cause a detrailment. This would be more of an issue in curves and turnouts. [img]http://members.cox.net/dbhuff/images/rail_wheel.gif[/img] Second, I checked the accuracy of the trucks on several of the cars I have and found that some, if not most, of them are warpped, twisted and/or skewed (not much just a little) and wondered if this would cause performance issues. It seems to me that if the journals aren't lined up it would cause binding (reduced rolling quality) and/or track jumping. The trucks I checked were Life-Like (el cheapos), Athearn (blue box kits) and Con-Cor (RTR). Here's how I checked them. I put the truck without wheelsets on a piece of 1/4" plate glass. Then measured from the glass surface to the center of the journal piviot point. I used the measurement of the 3 journal centers that were the same or closest to the same as the zero base plane. The measurement that was most different was what I used as the height difference. For example; journal center A, B and C all measured the same height from the glass, for the sake of argument lets say .250", but journal D measured .268" then the truck is off by .018. The second measurement I took was for squareness. I measured diagonally to see if the trucks were skewed (out of square), I found a few trucks that were off by as much as .014". This would "turn" the wheels into the rail causing them to want to jump the track. For the third measurement I checked journal center to center of the same side and found that the tooling setup for left side to be different than right side. This puts the wheels on one side closer together than the opposing side. The wheels on the side being closer together would make the truck steer that direction, the truck then would be in a constant turn (like the steering mechanism on a wagon). I have not done these same measurements on any of the aftermarket trucks, as I don't have any onhand, so don't know if replacing the original trucks would be of any advantage. I question whether aftermarket trucks are better or do they also suffer from the same issues? <hr noshade size="1">Aggro, "If I buy any rolling stock at a show, I plan on changing the trucks and wheels." Why do you think you should replace the ones you buy from a show?
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