Anybody change the wheels on their Athearn Auto-Max cars? I tried the FVM 2801, which say they're for Athearn, but they were too short. A different brand would be fine, I believe the FVM 28" wheels have been discontinued.
I will cast some doubt and confusion onto this topic. First, re the prototype, I can find examples where 33" wheels are used on all 3 trucks, and cases where 28" are used on the end trucks and 33" on the articulated truck. (I haven't seen a case where 28" are used on the middle truck.) Here's an example with 33" wheels: http://www.railcarphotos.com/PhotoDetails.php?PhotoID=44478 and some examples with 28" end wheels: http://www.railcarphotos.com/PhotoDetails.php?PhotoID=41545 http://www.railcarphotos.com/PhotoDetails.php?PhotoID=54382 If you look closely at the stenciling, you can see 28" wheels are called out in the latter, but not in the former. I'm not sure why they are different, but you could probably justify either choice on your models, though refer to pics for absolute accuracy. As far as axle length goes, I have only converted half of one Auto-Max to 28" wheels (work in progress...) and I substituted an MT truck in that case. However, I just now tried dropping a 2801 wheel into the stock Athearn truck on the same model and it fit beautifully, so I'm not sure what to tell you. FWIW, I tried putting 3301 FVM wheels into an Athearn bay window caboose and they were a bit too short and wobbly (but long enough to still work). Those trucks really wanted an axle length of .545" (between the .540 and .553 lengths that FVM offers). I wonder if you have something similar on your Auto-Max? If so, you could always convert to MT trucks. -Gary P.S. Just to add one further point of confusion. The first set of 2801 wheels I purchased turned out to be mislabeled: they were really .553 length axles (2802?). I doubt that happened to you here though.
The Athearn Auto-Max actualy used an Atlas/Accumate type truck that has a longer axle, try the .553 axles on them.
Not quite. When Mark (Spookshow) and I were working on the truck guide I contacted both Atlas and Athearn about the Accumate trucks. Atlas produced the couplers for Athearn. Athearn always produced their own trucks. There is only one truck that may have been from Atlas and that was to 100T ASF truck. As you recall, Atlas quickly redesigned their 100T truck ifter the "exploding coupler" fiasco. They went from an ASF to a Barber prototype. That ASF tooling then sat unused. My guess is that the Chinese company in charge of tooling Athearn's trucks borrowed the unused Atlas toolng. Now this does not account for the many, many axle lenths that both Atlas and Atlas seem to have. I have no explanation for that other than there seems to be three distinct generations of Atlas trucks: first generation had a smaller axle. the middle generation had the largerst axle and the current generation (the new 100T truck used on their 20K tank and thrall gons) is something different again. Athearn is also all over the map, but I can not find a pattern.
