I recently purchased a old Con-cor 4-6-4 J3A Hudson. This is my first N scale steam engine. Going by the Spookshow site, I have the 2nd version build by Kato with the tender pickup and wires. It was designed with four traction tires on the outer drivers, but when I bought it one was missing and the others were perished. I replaced them with Kato GS-4 traction tires. However, the drivers all appear to be wobbling. I tried adjusting the side rods to get rid of any binding, but I still see a wobble even with the side rods removed. Any thoughts on what I can do to fix this? Also, are there any connectors available that will fit in the hole in the front of the tender? I'd like to be able to disconnect the tender from the locomotive without desoldering, disassembly, or yanking wires.
The wobble might come from the traction tires not setting right. As far as electrical connectors check Radio Shack because a number of years ago I was able to get some mini connectors from them.
If you roll the locomotive along with the motor not connected, does everything roll smoothly, or do you feel binding at any point? And do you see any side to side wobble with the drivers? 4 out of 6 drivers having TTs sounds like something of an overkill... I wonder why they did that?
In the first run of Con-Cor Hudsons the factory molded the driver centers out of engineering plastic. The Hudson has a clever self-quartering design but it relies on a friction fit of the driver center/axle stub into the gear axle. With slippery plastic the drivers can move out of gauge. Your problem sounds like somebody tried to fix this and failed. Also, the engine should only one set of traction tires on one driver pair probably an aftermarket swap. The add-on flywheel proved not to be necessary or advisable as it actually increased the voltage required to start the engine.tt I don’t know about later runs as I left Con-Cor shortly after the first run and had no need for any more Hudsons beyond the two I had. Properly made it is still a brilliant bulletproof design whose biggest problem was the hardwired tender pickup wires being ripped from the motor by the customer. Almost no repairs on the engines even with the driver problem. Charlie Vlk
.............funny thing about that.....................I got one, the de-shrouded version, from the first run of Chinese manufacture that had the add-on flywheel. It would pull four Kato smoothsides up a one per-cent grade, but slipping badly. It would not take five. I added the flywheel. It pulled all ten up that one per-cent grade with no problem. I suspect that it was designed to run with the flywheel, as that affected the balance of the thing.
You may be right but the engine wasn’t redesigned much from the Sekisui version. I don’t remember what mods were made if any to the end of the frame halves to clear the flywheel. The weight of the flywheel might have added a little oomph to the rear wheel traction tires. The Japan-built revised engines were good pullers without any flywheel. Charlie Vlk
This was the problem, which was the wheels on the front gear axle were mounted crooked on it. It was causing the engine to hunt badly down the track. I tried my best to get the wheels straight on the gear axle, but I haven't been able to get them 100% there with the wheel gauge on my Micro Trains coupler height gauge. It's better though, the shimmy is much less pronounced and the Hudson is usable again. I will mess around with the bad axle some more to see if I can get the drivers closer to perpendicular with the gear axle. The front and rear drivers on my Hudson have the TT groove in them. If the Kato-made Con-Cor Hudson was only supposed to use two traction tires, then does anyone know if the non-TT (front?) drivers had the groove in the tread, or were they smooth like the center drivers? I'd like to find the correct axle/wheels if possible, but I think the only way that will happen is if I can find a parts donor.
Glad you figured out the driver issue. Yay! Another steamer saved! As for a pin for the tender, TCS sells a lot of different micro size pin assemblies, with or without wires already soldered to them.
