Hello All,
What a great project!
In addition to the Micro-Mark HO Truck Tuner you might consider adding a Kadee #206 HO Insulated Multi-Purpose Coupler Height Gauge.
jkovacs5The underside of the cars are almost feature-free, so if I need to shim the KD boxes, it will be pretty darned easy.
Shimming the draft gear boxes will only drop the coupler height.
If you need to raise the coupler height you have a couple of options.
As has been mentioned in this thread...
Question about 33" vs. 36" sized metal wheel sets?
Changing the size of the wheels will affect the coupler height.
InterMountain lists the various wheel diameters for HO from 28- to 38-inch.
Measuring wheels can be difficult without the aid of a caliper measuring tool.
I picked up a digital caliper from Harbor Freight. It measures standard; in both decimal and fractional (very handy) along with metric.
Another option to raise the coupler head is an Underset Shank coupler, available in different shank lengths.
Or, you can add washers between the truck and the car body. Kadee makes two (2) thicknesses of insulated washers, along with plastic ones, for this; #208, #209 & #210.
A drawback to this method is if the car body has to be raised too high, to align the coupler heads, it can become tippy and unstable.
Good luck with your project and as always...
Hope this helps.
"Uhh...I didn’t know it was 'impossible' I just made it work...sorry"
"One difference between pessimists and optimists is that while pessimists are more often right, optimists have far more fun."
Thanks Rick. I think I'll give the stock trucks a tune-up (gives me an excuse to finally pick up a Truck Tuner) and replace the wheels first before bothering with a full truck replacement. The underside of the cars are almost feature-free, so if I need to shim the KD boxes, it will be pretty darned easy.
-Jason
Jason,
The pictured car via the bay site looks very similar in set up to the old time line from Con-Cor.
OC&T 65 HO Scale Project 1 by Richard Woodworth, on Flickr
On my set of these, I added body mounted KD's and boxes, and metal wheelsets, while being able to reuse the stock trucks.
I cut off the talgo mounts, and used a micromark Truck Tuner along with Walthers Proto 36" wheelsets.
OC&T 65 HO Project 2 by Richard Woodworth, on Flickr
These upgrades were very easy, quick, and greatly improved the running quality of these cars in my tests.
(Bonus: On the Con-Cor version, I mounted the KD box right to the underside, no shims, and they were the correct height with the 36" wheelsets. If the Scene Master line is indeed the same cars under a different name, the conversion will be just as easy.)
I have not upgraded details yet, but that would also be pretty simple changes.
I have also converted a old Life-Like boxcar to body mounted KD's and metal wheelsets.
Bennett Lumber rebuilt - Workbench part 2 by Richard Woodworth, on Flickr
That one needed a thin shim to get the correct coupler height however. I used thin sheet styrene I had on hand, and it worked well. I did not replace the stock trucks on this one either, although I may in the future upgrade it to better quality trucks. Again, with the Truck Tuner and Proto wheelsets, it is free rolling.
Even "cheap" cars have value, especially when they were gifted by someone important. Well worth the conversion efforts in my opinion.
Ricky W.
HO scale Proto-freelancer.
My Railroad rules:
1: It's my railroad, my rules.
2: It's for having fun and enjoyment.
3: Any objections, consult above rules.
Hi all,
A current excursion into a limited HO adventure has caused me to dig deep through some old boxes of my model railroading gear from when I was a youngster in the late 80s/early 90s. Most of the little that is left is what you'd expect to find in the box of a 10-14 year old; lots of the cheap stuff only really worth saving if you plan on modeling a junk yard. But there was one set of passenger cars that I wouldn't mind resurrecting, if for no other reason than they were a Christmas gift from my grandfather, the person by far most responsible for getting me hooked on model railroading. I thought to upgrade the poorly molded trucks, add some metal wheel sets with wipers, install some basic lighting, and maybe add some minor detail work here and there to spruce them up.
The problem is, I can't really find anything about this product line or a truck conversion chart that even mentions them. As the title of the post says, they're Life-Like's SceneMaster line of "Old Passenger Cars", which had two-axle trucks and talgo horn-hook couplers, with the trucks mounted with a plastic pin. I have a six car PRR set; RPO/baggage, a sleeper, 3 coaches, and an observation car. I had thought of picking up a set of Walther's #920-2112 PRR 2-axle trucks and building up a bolster for them as needed on the underbody, and then do the same for some body-mounted Kadee couplers.
I don't have any picture of the cars in question handy, but here's a current eBay listing for the same line of passenger cars for referecne: Link
Anyone have any experience upgrading these (what I assume were) relatively cheap passenger cars with more modern hardware? I know there's no real value to doing so, but there's a sentimental connection for me that makes the effort worthwhile.
Thanks,