Any one had any experience with these wheels? A friend has some but some of them seem to be out of round or the axles are slightly off. Not all the wheels are this way but I don't want to spend $$ to only have to discard a large percentage due to bent or out of round wheels sets. Anyone?
I have nothing but praise for these wheels. They are by far the best looking on the market and I have yet to encounter one that was out of round or gauge. (I'm guessing that I've updated 25-30 cars so far, so 100+ axles.) If you care at all about wheels, you won't regret the investment.
Thanks for the response. I was thinking (and hoping) may be he had just a couple of bad wheels in his package. I was really impress by the scale type look and want to upgrade to all metal so I wanted to get an opinion of someone who has used quite a few of there wheels. I think I will give them a try.:tb-biggrin:
I think I've figured out the problem here. You are in Z-scale and FVM wheel are in N. Probably the guage is a little wide there. (tongue-in-cheek)
My friend and I are also modeling in N scale so that is why the question for the FVM wheels. I wished there were metal wheels for Z scale.
I used FVM 36" metal wheels for the lead truck on my Bachmann 4-8-4 and also the tender trucks. They're very uniform and appear to be a quality product. I've also used Atlas metal wheels -- a LOT of them. I have had the occassional "wobbler" but probably less than 3%. I use metal because they don't decompose on the track like plastic, seem to track better possibly due to the higher weight, and I needed low profile wheels for my Atlas code 55 track.
He may have the wrong ones in the trucks. There are different wheel sets for different trucks.( ie MT, Atlas, Con-cor) I have heard nothing but praise and plan on converting my entire fleet.
Hold it. Are we asure that plastic wheels "decompose on the track"? If anything my plastic wheels seem to attack dirt rather than "decompose". How do you know that black residue on the rails is from plastic wheels? Did it ever occur to anyone that maybe it is from something else? Like brass oxidation for instance. Don't be fooled by the term "nickle silver" as applied to our track. There is no silver in it. It is an alloy of brass with nickle added. Less nickle, more brass and more of that black stuff that you call decomposing plastic. Track manufacturers like Atlas have a reason to lessen the nickle content of track. A metric ton of nickle currently sells for over $25,000.00. That is down from last year when the price was over $55,000.00/metric ton. Plastic wheels have gotten a bad rap.
No offense meant. I should have added YMMV. I haven't cleaned my track in 18 mos. except for a few spot touchups. That was never the case on my old HO layout with plastic wheels on my rolling stock. I'll grant you this is not exactly a controlled experiment, but I'm impressed with the difference!
I just got in a 100 pack of 36" wheels for my WOT Harrimans. They look fantastic, and all the sets I checked were in gauge. They roll much better than the plastic wheelsets did, and look alot better as well.
is there a general rule as to what gets what size of wheel? i.e. 33" vs. 36"? and to the thread starter ... did you contact FVM directly? I am sure that they would be more than willing to replace defective wheelsets that you might have. They seem to be the type of company that still believes in good customer service
No I haven't contacted them(FVM). It sounds like this is an isolated incident. I wondering now if something might have dropped on the package of wheels causing some minor damage. I'm glad to hear that everyone is having great success with the FVM wheels and I am planning on ordering many sets as the praise that FVM is getting here is outstanding.
Of the 800 wheels I have bough so far only 3 were out of gage. But the biggest problem I have with FVM wheels is that they are out of stock.
Just put 4 RC center beam cars in service this evening with 36" FVM's (and some BLMA crosswalks). All wheels were flawless. FWIW I see that Chuck at FRT just posted a that he's expecting a new shipment of wheels next week. Gary
One of the fellows in our NTrak club outfitted about 100 cars with the FVM wheelsets and they operate great! I was worried that the smaller flange would easily derail on the notorious gaps and undulations that can exist on NTrak layouts, but his operated flawlessly. He did have 2 axles that shorted out due to each axle having two full metal wheels (no insulating bushing on one wheel), but were quickly replaced by FMV. The only problem I had with them was that when "Santa" went to order mine, they were out of stock.....
