Has anyone purchased any of the High Tech Diaphragms and attached then to their passenger coaches. The question is, "do they work well; any problems with these diaphragms?"
They look interesting and the pictures on the web sight look good.
Robert Sylvester
Newberry-Columbia Line
I do not know these, I like the American Limited diaphragms
George In Midcoast Maine, 'bout halfway up the Rockland branch
I suppose Robert means these:
http://www.hitechdetails.com/Hi-Tech-P_Car_Diaphragms.html
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
Big Daddy's information is correct, you go right to the picture of the diaphragm. The site also depicts how to assemble and attach them to your coaches. They look good. Precision Scale make a nice bellows diaphragm with brass stricker plates. The rubber is very soft and collapses nicely betwen cars especially around curves. I put five on this past week. They look great to me.
I also use the Walthers paper diaphragms which are also bellows type and look good on my brass coaches as well.
I have tried American Limited, at first I liked them but the more I looked at these other diaphragms I began to like them better, plus my eye sight make it more difficult to assemble the America Limited brand. But I just like the realism of the bellows type diaphragms.
Thanks,
Mel: One thing about the Walthers paper diaphragms, they are too may bellows in the diaphragm. Chuck Hitchcock explained that you may need to remove a complete section of a bellows to make the diaphragm more narrow. That is what I had to do and it improved the running of my coaches on sharper curves. You are right though, you do need nice curves to make things look good, but try removing a section the diaphragm, I just use a pair of scissors to cut off the section then using contact cement I attach it to the coach then I attach the striker plate to the diaphragm.
Robert Sylvester,
Oh, I forgot, if you look closely at some of these videos like Allen Keller's and the like you will notice that the diaphragms have some space inbetween the striker plates and of the curves they still maintain that space because they removed a section of the bellows and another trick is to glue a piece of clear thin plastic over the striker plate so the striker plates won't grab on to each other in the curves
The plastic allows the striker plats to glide or slide over each other and not catch on the edges or the corners.
I have perfected the distances between coaches and with the soft bellows of Walthers or Precision Scale the diaphragms don't cause derailments on the curves. And on some of my coaches I do place a piece of clear plastic as I suggested to keep the diaphragms from grabbing each other.