I've a BLI Santa fe 2-10-2,with a nagging problem. The front tender truck wheelsets will move around almost at will. The axle needle points and wheel gauge seem fine. The electrical pickup plate assembly and flexible plastic truck frame always need careful re-alignment and the wheelsets need to be repositioned back to bearing area. Anyone got fix for this ?
promblematic BLI tender trucks
- Thread starter eldncn
- Start date
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:curse:I have the same problem with mine. I called BLI and they weren't much help. Maybe if you called them, they might give you a better answer. If they do, please pass it on to the rest of us.wall1
Dick
Texas Chief
Dick
Texas Chief
Are the trucks sprung? I have a boxcar with sprung trucks where the bottom of the sideframes splayed out under the weight of the car. This allowed the ends of the axles to slip out of the bearing area in the sideframe, causing the car to derail. I fixed it by drilling a hole in the bottom of the sideframes, beneath the area where the springs sit, then bending a piece of .015" music wire to act as a tie bar to keep the frames from spreading. The tie bar ends are bent up, then inserted into the hole from below. Make sure that it doesn't hang too low.
Wayne
Wayne
Wayne, the trucks are not sprung like freight car trucks. They're like most other tender trucks I would assume. There appears to be a metal frame inside a plastic sideframe that the axle ends fit into. The metal frame seems to slip upwards on one side, taking with it one end of one axle, thereby causing that axle to be on a different plane than the others, hence, the derailment.
Dick
Texas Chief
Dick
Texas Chief
Without a picture, it's difficult to imagine. Could you drill through the sideframe and the metal plate (with them properly aligned, of course), then insert a wire "pin" to hold them in position? Probably a hole and pin at both ends of each sideframe, with the pins ca'd in place. You'd have to ensure that the pin was flush on the outside so that it wouldn't be noticeable, and flush on the inside so that it wouldn't interfere with the wheels. If the metal plate is for electrical purposes and to allow the wheelsets to equalise, it might be better to use only a single pin at the centre, length-wise, of the sideframe. In either case, I'd use music wire to make the pins - use a cut-off disk in your Dremel to cut them and to finish them flush.
Wayne
Wayne