I think that with Aristo the first thing you have to do is bring the parts into compliance with standards.
To my way of thinking that means first get those flanges thinned down - from the back. To do that you have to pull the axles apart, out of that plastic tube or tube/gear combination in the middle.
Yes there’s a risk of breaking the plastic, splitting it or ruining the inner knurling or something, but do it anyway.
Then work on the flange.
The easiest method is to chuck the axle into a drillpress and go at the back of the flange with a file.
Next you have to get all wheels in gauge, so shove the axles back into those plastic sleeves and measure back to back. You’ll almost certainly have to remove them again and grind one or both of the axles a bit shorter. A very light touch on a grindwheel will do this part of the job. Now you have to reassemble things. I’ve had to deal with these plastic center parts enough to know they need reinforcement. They split and the axles separate. I’ve had some real fun experiences with this.
Whether or not your plastic tubes are already split or broken at this point, you really should reinforce them now anyway, as they will eventually cause trouble. I mean whether this is a regular car we’re working on - just the tube - or a piece of motive power - tube and gear molded on. even if you yourself never put any strain on it, the weight of the rolling stock and time will damage it. The plastic will for absolute certain dry out and split eventually, so fix it now while you have it all in pieces!
I reinforce these parts with lengths of brass tubing - not sure of the size right now, but it’s a tight fit - slipped over Aristo’s black tubes and epoxied. Did I mention that early in this whole procedure you’ve degreased everything? !!! That’s so the tools will grind and the glues will stick, in case you were wondering…
Now shove your axles back in, check the back to back gauge (I’m convinced this is the most critical one here) check that the thing rolls without wobble and adjust as necessary, and when you’ve got it right, apply crazy glue between the axle and that black tubing. Let it sit for an hour before fiddling with it any more. Overnite is even better. ‘Instant’ ACC adhesives strengthen considerably with this extra time allowance.
Well, that’s the general procedure. Right now I’m working on an Aristo 0-4-0 where the gear/tubing combo blew out and threw the driver right out of the picture, darn near ruined the monkey motion and main rods as well. Happened while running at a show, naturally. My fault. It was new and I assumed it was OK. Wotta fool. Sure it’s under warranty, but by the time I’m finished with it it’ll be better than new, and that’s the whole point.
In a case like this, BTW, you have to add a fairly simple little procedure for quartering the drivers as well. You set up a square standing upright and a straightedge the width of yr driver radius, and put yr drivers on the axle between these 2 gauges. Remove and replace or else twist yr drivers until they’re truly quartered, adjust for gauge and finally apply that ACC adhesive as above.
If you have a lot of Aristo gear, you have my sympathy. There are a whole lot of problems with those sprung trucks and four-wheelers as well. They can be got to work beautifully, but it can be a lot of work filing and smoothing the moving parts. I have done it with some cars, and on others I just replaced the springs with a hunk of something solid, because AFAIC the equalization just isn’t worth the bother.
I think AristoCraft had very good intentions with a lot of their products, but went way off track in some places - smoke units in passenger cars, equalization of many of their cars, railings cast in base metal and then plated, crummy sintered wheelsets, are some examples. They would have been wiser to skip the luxuries and concentrate on really reliable and solid mechs and wheelsets that were in compliance with track standards. Now there’s a novel idea.
Once again it’s the old rule: keep things simple.
The more you add, the more there is to go wrong!
To the guy who praised Hartland on the previous page for concentrating on these last factors, I couldn’t agree more. Their stuff skips the fine detail and is just plain solid and pretty near kid-proof. I buy into that. After all I can add all the fine detail I want. One improvement Hartland could make would be to make our disassembly of their stuff easier and more obvious. Then we’d have an even better TRULY great source to work on…
That was me, trying to get the Pacific in gauge. The flanges were way too large and out of conformance.
