Well I bought some Exactoscale bearings but decided that they were just too small and fiddly for my purposes. I'm sure they will come in useful for something. Exactoscale on the left, LH (Lionheart) originals on the right.
I decided to fabricate something resembling the LH originals. A filed down PT (Peartree) bearing, a large diameter 6BA washer and a short length of some brass tube (a snug fit over the bearing) were soldered together and cleaned up. That's a LH bearing on the right.
The axles were also shortened - slightly too much as it happens. The above photo shows original and shortened axles.
The bogie was reassembled but it became apparent that I had failed to consider an important dimension - the distance between the bearing front face (which contacts the wheel hub) and the washer rear face (which contacts the bogie beam). Because my fabrication was too slim in this dimension, there was too much lateral movement of bearings and axles in the bogie frame. However, the principle appeared to be sound.
These are the principle bogie parts:
The bearings sit in the beam like this:
The bogie side has a slot to allow the rear of the bearing which protrudes behind the beam to move vertically providing basic compensation.
There are several plastic pins which are used to locate the various parts and these are very fragile. I managed to shear several but repaired by drilling a 0.7mm hole in the plastic part and supergluing a short piece of 0.8mm steel rod as the locator in the hole intended for the plastic pin to fit into (and yes, the way I drill, 0.8mm DOES fit into a 0.7mm hole!). You can see a 'mod' at the right of this frame. The small boss at top centre is where the beam locates and pivots.
Photo of the assembled bogie on the right with LH original on the left.
I then made some slightly thicker bearings. This time with 2 larger washers which fitted over the slightly longer lengths of tube.
These were thicker and the axles for the second bogie were just filed back by c0.5mm on each side. LH originals to the right.
This time everything fitted fine. The first bogie was reworked, all of the broken locating pins bodged/repaired and everything was reassembled.
I'll take it to Mark next week for a run around the test track to see if it behaves OK and for anyone remotely interested to inspect the bodgery!
Dave
p.s. the FS C&L track visible in the last photo is part of a full-size mock up of my Challenge 33+3 entry. More on that later.
