Well, the dead horse beater has this to say…Quality can not be inspected into a product, it needs to be designed and manufactured with quality in mind. Something that I don’t think is ingrained in the Chinese mindset. When you consider that automobiles costing $20k and up are still delivered to the customer with defects regardless of where they were made, I think it’s a bit too much to expect a $4 axle set from China to be perfect 100% of the time. Inspect them for quality before shipping ? I suspect if Bachmann spent the resources necessary to inspect each axle set for defects they would need to up the price considerably, which would make them as expensive as other options and probably price some out of converting altogether. With few exceptions virtually everything made for the large scale hobby has some issues that some folks would consider a defect or design flaw. Feel free to complain, return for replacement, rant or whatever, I find it unlikely you see any changes in the way things are done at Bachmann, so from my point of view, you are still beating a dead horse, Be thankful you have an inexpensive source of metal wheels and just get over it !
Feel free to complain, return for replacement, rant or whatever, I find it unlikely you see any changes in the way things are done at Bachmann, so from my point of view, you are still beating a dead horse, Be thankful you have an inexpensive source of metal wheels and just get over it !
Gary I agree. And being a cheap bast person, like I am, I decided to fix the wonky ones instead of complaining, returning, or tossing them. I am glad to have a less expensive option, and like I said, fixing them doesn’t take much time at all.
I also had to drive the plastic inserts out of USA wheels and trim the flash off the insert to make them work. That was years ago, and I don’t see that issue on USA wheels anymore, but I did. So its not just Bachmann.
Greg Elmassian said:
thanks Dave… worst case pull the wheel, pull the insert, trim flash if needed and reassemble insert and wheel. Got it.
I’ll have to try it. You are the first person I know that has a fix for wobbly Bachmann wheels, congrats.
Greg
But…like I said in a previous post: I punched out the plastic insert, no flash was evident, cleaned the insert and the hole, re-assembled the insert back it into the wheel flush and even all around…still no dice. So I punted.
Michael, I don’t know what to say on that one. All my Bachmann metal wheels, that I have taken out of their packages, are in service on my railroad, without wobbling. I have no idea how many axles it is, but it has to be well over 100 axles. And I mean well over.
Gary Buchanan, FOG said:
Well, the dead horse beater has this to say…Quality can not be inspected into a product, it needs to be designed and manufactured with quality in mind. Something that I don’t think is ingrained in the Chinese mindset. When you consider that automobiles costing $20k and up are still delivered to the customer with defects regardless of where they were made, I think it’s a bit too much to expect a $4 axle set from China to be perfect 100% of the time. Inspect them for quality before shipping ? I suspect if Bachmann spent the resources necessary to inspect each axle set for defects they would need to up the price considerably, which would make them as expensive as other options and probably price some out of converting altogether. With few exceptions virtually everything made for the large scale hobby has some issues that some folks would consider a defect or design flaw. Feel free to complain, return for replacement, rant or whatever, I find it unlikely you see any changes in the way things are done at Bachmann, so from my point of view, you are still beating a dead horse, Be thankful you have an inexpensive source of metal wheels and just get over it !
I haven’t gotten over it. Sorry about that! Regarding crap quality product coming from China. Heard about it many times; have seen it first hand. But saying there’s a problem across the board with Large Scale product - isn’t that reaching? Some of USA Trains product is now produced in China. So far, haven’t had any issues with them at all. Should I keep my fingers crossed or are they carrying on Charlie Ro’s tradition of USA Quality over there? I’d like to think they are. What other Large Scale product is produced in China? Bachmann? Only Bachmann product I buy is their defective wheels! What else? Quality goes in before the name goes on. Where have I heard that before? I could go on and on and on here, but I’d be beating…a dead horse.
Is this an issue of not having the same definition of wonky? Michael are you expecting no wobble, a perfectly true running wheel set? David are you allowing a certain “tolerable” amount of wobble? Those could be two very different things. Just through the course of this discussion I get the feeling what David sees as acceptable and what Michael sees as acceptable are different.
When I do finally get my wheels I know I will check them for gauge and wobble. Fix the ones that need it. But a little wobble won’t bother me if it makes it around the track reliably. That’s what I expect from the low bidder.
David Maynard said:
Michael, I don’t know what to say on that one. All my Bachmann metal wheels, that I have taken out of their packages, are in service on my railroad, without wobbling. I have no idea how many axles it is, but it has to be well over 100 axles. And I mean well over.
David, to be truthful, I haven’t spent a lot of time trying to fix these. I tried to fix two or three a while back to no avail. I’ll give it another shot this weekend. It seems like extraneous material (flash) and re-seating the inserts in the holes is not always the cause of the problem. I’ll get my calipers, magnifying glass, educated eyes, utilize more patience, have an Amber Ale (not necessarily in that order) and spend more time with ‘em and see what happens. Maybe even take a “before and after” video of the proceedings with the ol’ iPhone. Film at 11!
Devon Sinsley said:
Is this an issue of not having the same definition of wonky? Michael are you expecting no wobble, a perfectly true running wheel set? David are you allowing a certain “tolerable” amount of wobble? Those could be two very different things. Just through the course of this discussion I get the feeling what David sees as acceptable and what Michael sees as acceptable are different.
When I do finally get my wheels I know I will check them for gauge and wobble. Fix the ones that need it. But a little wobble won’t bother me if it makes it around the track reliably. That’s what I expect from the low bidder.
Devon: My expectations are a little high. Knowing I’m buying a product that is literally half the price of the competition, I also know “You pay for what you get”. I also know that a Manufacturer, in order to compete, should produce a Quality part. Consistently. I know this particular Manufacturer is capable of producing good Quality parts. I’ve seen it! Why can’t they produce packages of wheels where EVERY ONE of them is of good Quality? In Quality, we call that “repeatability”. See? It’s just me! Beating a dead horse! No wobblers! Is asking that these wheels roll down the tracks just like Gary Raymond’s or LGB’s, USA Trains, Sierra Valley, San Val’s, or others too much to ask?? I think not.
Devon Sinsley said:
When I do finally get my wheels I know I will check them for gauge and wobble. Fix the ones that need it. But a little wobble won’t bother me if it makes it around the track reliably. That’s what I expect from the low bidder.
That’s what I was saying, Devon. First, I’ll put together good sets, which I didn’t know you could take a wheel off and put it on another axle, but now I do. That’ll leave me with about a 7% - 8% bad rate. My question on tolerable wobble was, What will happen on the switches? especially those ridiculously ill-designed Aristocraft switches which I tediously had to fix FOR them…but I won’t get started on that again. We will see.
At that point, I’ll fly David Maynard out here at my expense for a weekend and put him up in a nice hotel and pay him to fix the wheels, which should dollar-cost my purchase up to about $95 per axle. Ha ! Maybe I’ll back-charge Bachmann. Ha ha ha !
Michael Kirrene said:
Devon: My expectations are a little high. That’s 100% fair, nothing wrong with that. Knowing I’m buying a product that is literally half the price of the competition, I also know “You pay for what you get”. I also know that a Manufacturer, in order to compete, should produce a Quality part. Consistently. I know this particular Manufacturer is capable of producing good Quality parts. I’ve seen it! Why can’t they produce packages of wheels where EVERY ONE of them is of good Quality? In Quality, we call that “repeatability”. See? It’s just me! Beating a dead horse! No wobblers! Is asking that these wheels roll down the tracks just like Gary Raymond’s or LGB’s, USA Trains, Sierra Valley, San Val’s, or others too much to ask??At half the price of the aforementioned wheels set, I think so. I don’t expect a Hyundai Genesis to run like a Mclarean sports car. I do expect it to have a certain level of performance, and 1 in 10 shouldn’t be a lemon but I don’t expect it to be on par with the best. I think not.
John Passaro said:
Devon Sinsley said:
When I do finally get my wheels I know I will check them for gauge and wobble. Fix the ones that need it. But a little wobble won’t bother me if it makes it around the track reliably. That’s what I expect from the low bidder.
At that point, I’ll fly David Maynard out here at my expense for a weekend and put him up in a nice hotel and pay him to fix the wheels, which should dollar-cost my purchase up to about $95 per axle. Ha ! Maybe I’ll back-charge Bachmann. Ha ha ha !
Devon asks a good question, though. What’s an acceptable wobble and what’s not? Is wheel wobble go/no-go to be measured with calipers or is the naked eye good enough? Is it subjective?
Where’s that horse…
Devon Sinsley said:
Is this an issue of not having the same definition of wonky? Michael are you expecting no wobble, a perfectly true running wheel set? David are you allowing a certain “tolerable” amount of wobble? Those could be two very different things. Just through the course of this discussion I get the feeling what David sees as acceptable and what Michael sees as acceptable are different.
When I do finally get my wheels I know I will check them for gauge and wobble. Fix the ones that need it. But a little wobble won’t bother me if it makes it around the track reliably. That’s what I expect from the low bidder.
Ok, I have a wheel gauge. If the wheels are in gauge throughout the entire revolution of the axle, then it passes my check and is placed in service.
Courtesy of the Saskatoon Railroad Modelers
So one wheel could conceivably have a very slight wobble and still pass and be placed in service. So long as the set is in gauge, all the way around, it will work, and work well.
But considering how thick the flanges on the wheels are, and how narrow the gauge’s flange slots are, the wobble would have to be very slight, to no wobble at all. Ok Devon?
Per Kevin Strong -
I just had a chance to go through the wheels in the case I bought. About half of them exhibited some degree of “wobble” relative to the wheel being square to the axle. It’s definitely noticeable when you watch the wheels spin, but I think whether it will have any impact on their operation is a matter of degrees. For instance, I measured the back-to-back spacing for the wheels that exhibited some degree of wobble at the narrow point and the wide point. At the worst, the difference was about 0.025". In most cases, it was around 0.015". For reference, the NMRA standards allow for a minimum back-to-back of 1.560", and a maximum back-to-back of 1.594", so that’s a range of 0.034". Bachmann’s “wobble” falls within that tolerance.
Now, that’s not exactly an accurate means to gauge whether the “wobble” is acceptable, because the Back-to-Back measurement needs to be paired with the thickness of the flange in order for the wheel to be properly deemed “in gauge.” The Bachmann wheels have thick flanges (0.090"), so their back-to-back spacing should fall on the narrower end of that allowable spectrum. However, a “wobble” of only 0.015" is unlikely to give you any operational difficulties. I checked the wheels on some of the cars I have in service on the railroad, and while most of them are fairly true (because I cherry-picked them early on) I do have some which wobble on the order of 0.015". They’ve not given me any concern, nor can I notice any odd behavior in how the car runs. I might be tempted to set aside any wheels which have a “wobble” of greater than .020". I wouldn’t necessarily toss them out, because they’ll probably still work quite well, but I’d maybe save them for that piece of rolling stock you don’t run all that often.
In terms of fixing things, you can easily adjust the back-to-back spacing on the Bachmann wheels. They’re just a press fit onto the axle so adjusting them is just a matter of some light tapping or even just twisting the wheels very gently to adjust the wheels. (The black plastic tubing that covers the axle keeps you from twisting them too narrow.) Harder to do would be to fix the plastic hubs on the wheel itself. Quite honestly, I’m not sure how you’d go about adjusting that without changing out the plastic inserts. You can’t really bend them, because that will bend the axle.
Personally, I’d check the back-to-back spacing to make sure it averages around the 1.560" mark. I usually don’t adjust wheels unless there’s a problem, so while my early Bachmann wheels are cherry-picked to some degree to minimize any wobbling, they’re not really adjusted all that much, if at all. My back-to-back spacing have a range of around 1.545" to 1.575", with most falling on the lower half of that spectrum. Running in the garden, there’s no visual sign that the wheels might not be 100% perfect.
Later,
K
in all this I have not seen anything mentioned about any cars with wobbly wheels installed having problems in turnouts or problems with derailing on curves. What problems do the wobbly wheels show? where do they show it the most?
David Maynard said:
Ok Devon?
Works for me. But I am cheap and easy. But what your saying is you get them pretty dang close to perfect. So thats a good thing in my book, because I know your a lot like me. . . that means being a cheap SOB. So if your doing it to that level with the cheap wheels that makes me very happy.
Pete the only equipment that I have run with really wobbly wheels, and I only tried to run it once, is my Aristocraft Consolidation. She jumped at the switch, and then climbed the rails in a curve and I put her back in the box. So that’s my only experience that I have had.
So I received my first shipment of Bachmann Big Haulers 31.00mm wheels. 6 Cards 24 axles. Got them from Star. $80.00 shipped. So each set is $13.33.
I wanted to see what all the fuss is about with the wobbley wheels so I pulled them all out of the packages and did some very sophisticated testing. I rolled each one on a cutting board and looked for noticeable wobble. I also set my calipers to 1.570 which is NMRA minimum Back to Back. Here is what I found
3 needed to be regauged by spreading them. I was going to check for to wide but it is clear none are too wide.
18 axles had exhibited no noticeable wobble.
6 axles had at least some noticeable wobble.
3 of those are so slight that I doubt they will cause any problem and once installed will be forgotten about.
That leaves 3 that I would say are “in need of tweaking” In all likelihood none of these three need to be messed with. Like Kevin S has mentioned he puts them on and runs them and has no issue. I am sure I would find the same to be true. If no one would have ever brought this conversation up I doubt I would have noticed or cared. The wobble the worst offenders isn’t what I would call alarming. But since I know how to fix it I will give it a shot.
All in all I would say these are well worth the price. Sure top shelf would be better but when you’re cheap these will do and I am cheap.
OK I have just tried to fix the offending wheels. I popped out the insert cleaned the flash and reseated the insert as fully as it would go. And they still wobble. I wont fuss them them since I think they will work as is.
See? Not to be a wise cracker, but I told ya!
I have pin gauges at work, but don’t want to use one to pop out the hub, though it would be ideal. All I have laying around are screwdrivers and I can’t use those or I’ll damage the plastic hubs. Down to the hardware store I go tomorrow to find some kind of rod or something the right diameter of the hub to pop out the hub. Last couple I tried had no flash at all on the hub or in the hole. Either the hole in the wheel is not true or the hole in the hub isn’t true. Maybe I’ll see if I can get some spare hubs from Bachmann to eliminate one of the two variables. Or ask David to fix them - he seems to know the secret. Out of the four axles I put on my Corona Beer car last night, I had to reject one because a wheel wobbled. Lucky me got 3 out of 4 good ones!!
Well, I do not know what to say. I have rejected no Bachmann metal wheels. I found a wonky one on a car in my shop this week, a car that is waiting to be kit-bashed. This weekend I want to see if I can put together a how to on fixing these things.