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Horn Hook Question
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You don't have to convert all your cars to knuckle couplers at once. You can do it over time and spread out the cost. I was in the same boat as you about ten years ago. What you do is to create some transition cars that have a hook-horn on one end and a knuckle on the other. Then you can run cars equipped with both types of couplers together until you get all of your cars converted. Once I started converting cars, I established a rule that any new cars I add to my car fleet would immediately be converted to knuckle couplers when I built that car kit. That way I wouldn't be adding more hook-horn coupler equipped cars to my fleet. <br /> <br />In short, to convert a car with truck mounted hook-horn couplers to body mounted knuckle couplers involves cutting off the hook-horn couplerboxes from the trucks (the trucks can then be reused on the car). Remove the car bode from the frame/floor. Then mount a Kadee #5 coupler box (comes with the #5 couplers if you buy the individual 2-pair packs of #5 Kadees) to the frame of each end of the car (Note: when I converted my fleet to knuckle couplers, Kadee was the only manufacturer of working knuckle couplers). I used one of the Kadee #5 coupler boxes to position and drill a hole for the 2-56 screws that I used to mount the coupler box. Sometimes I had to put a notch in the end of the steel weight to allow room for the 2-56 screw and nut. Always use a Kadee coupler height gauge to vertically position the coupler. On most of these cars the coupler box will have to be raised or lowered. How to do this on each individual car is the tricky part as you will have to use different methods on different cars (I won't go into further detail, as it would take too long). As a help, Kadee's 20 and 30 series couplers includes overset and underset shank couplers that will fit into a #5 coupler box. The 20 series couplers also include a talgo truck mounting kit, which will allow you to mount a knuckle coupler into one of the truck mounted hook-horn coupler boxes (I would only do this as a last resort, and this only works on certain designs of hook-horn coupler boxes). <br /> <br />For Athearn (and others) that have body mounted hook-horn couplers, simply drop a #5 into the same coupler box. Always check coupler height as it often will need to be adjusted. <br /> <br />Finally, use a trip pin pliers to adjust the trip pin height per the coupler height gauge. <br /> <br />While I had the car apart for the coupler convertion, I also painted the steel weight black to keep it from rusting and to camoflage it. In addition, I installed metal wheelsets, and weighted the car per NMRA Recommended Practices. I used automotive self-stick wheel weights obtained in bulk through mail order from JC Whittney. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
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