Hello everyone. For those of you that are unlucky enough to own a Model Power 4-6-2 Pacific might already know by now what I found out this past Friday night. Their connection rod pins have a bad habit of coming lose... And when it happens it's real easy to lose the spacer/washer that helps to keep the rods from binding.
What I did was first take a tooth pick and line up the rods with the holes. Then I began looking for something to make a new washer/spacer out of which ended up being a small slice that I cut out of an old ink pen ink tube with a razor blade that was just the right diameter. Next I mixed up a small amount of liquid steel and put just enough on the end of a tooth pick and stuck it in the pin hole to almost fill the hole. After that, I stacked all the rods including the new plastic washer/spacer using hobby tweezers, I took hold of the pin which is connected to a rod and pushed it down into the holes and pressed it on in with the back end of the tweezers until it appeared as far in as the pin on the other side of the loco. I then put the engine on the tracks and slowy ran it forward and backward in order to keep the liquid steel from gluing the rods together until it had set up. Afterward, I gently oiled it, and wa la. It's repaired. I'm not sure how long the repair will last, but so far so good...
Tracklayer