New guy here. I have a mixture of ancient AHM, Aurora cars and new Kato cars. Some of my old cars have very high rolling resistance. Also, I have a mixture of the old style rapido couplers and the new scale type. I would like to buy a pack of new replacement trucks. What kind should I get EXACTLY. I'm confused. Also, what is the best way to replace missing truck pins? A very small pan head machine screw maybe? If so, what size screw and where do I get it? Thank you in advance for your help.
Micro Trains !! They have the trucks and the pins AND they also sell a sample pack to test them out. Loved your brother in Independence Day. Randy
Ditto for MicroTrains just go to their website and the retro trucks are listed for brand as well as often the model. Trucks come with two sizes of pins and round spacers to raise the car off the truck body if needed.
To be more exact, the unassembled couplers come with two sets of pins, one for MT and many other cars, and another for Atlas and a few other cars.You can of course choose trucks with couplers attached and relieve yourself of mounting problems, but if you do, please keep it to yourself, the body vs. truck mounted coupler argument brings out a lot of the crazies, myself included. And a pan head screw would be good too. Do the world a favor, throw the rapidos in the trash.
the MT website confuses me suppose you had some old n gauge trains of "intermediate quality" and you just wanted to stick some new trucks on them which MT bulk pack would you buy? would they be the "bettendorf" type? which coupler length? say you wanted new trucks and couplers for these two reefers
Yep, a few of us here retain our happy memories from the early days of N Scale. I no longer use Rapido couplers, except on our Christmas tree train sets where they reliably serve to rewind the clock 50+ years.
Doug, You need the standard Bettendorf truck with Magnematic coupler MT1000. You can buy these as a pair or in bulk packs in black or brown. They are very reliable. - Tonkphilip
The Rapidos are reliable, so I stuck with them for quite some time. MT used to sell 1500s, which were MT Bettendorf trucks with Rapido couplers. Once I saw that the manufacturers were getting away from Rapidos, I made the change, as well. I still have some 1500s. I did sell some of them on FeePay, but, I stopped listing them as it appears that interest in them has run out. As others mentioned, the easy way to do this is to buy the bulk packs of Bettendorf trucks. They also sell archbar trucks in the buk packs. I bought those for my nineteenth century cars. I am not sure if MT sells Andrews or roller bearing trucks in the bulk packs. For your locomotives, check out the MT website. Go to the conversion chart. Your passenger car trucks are 1017 for the four wheel and 1018 for the six wheel. 1133 is almost universal for older B-mann; 1134 for a longer shank (for sharp curves). If you are going to work with 1133/34, buy the coupler tweezers; they are just about indispensible for those two in particular. For most later Atlas and LLs, 1015/1016 is what you want. the 1016s have a l onger shank for sharper curves. The others that fit much of the equipment out there are the 2004s and 1023s.
First, I replace the trucks on all non MT cars with MT trucks. Second, I replace the plastic pins with 2/56 X 3/16 flat head black oxide screws from Micro Fasteners. The black oxide ones are easy to install using a Phillips head screwdriver with a magnetized tip. Here is the product number and URL for Micro Fasteners: Product # FMPPK0203 - 2-56 x 3/16 - Flat Head Machine Screws - Phillips - Steel Black Ox 100 pcs/pkg URL https://www.microfasteners.com/home.php?cat=604
Dunno about passenger cars, but 98% of my freight cars use Micro Trains roller bearing trucks with short shank couplers. Which style you use depends on when you are modelling, explained here: https://mrr.trains.com/~/media/import/files/pdf/4/c/c/mr_pi_5-06_freightcartrucks.ashx
