Greg, early as in when? Yea mine have a whitish corrosion. Time for another coat of rust coloured paint.
Greg Elmassian said:
Joe: I think “ferris wheels” are big and round and found at county fairs
ferrous …
Greg
My bad…
(http://www.umich.edu/~eng217/student_projects/Chicago%20Inventions/ferriswheel1.jpg)
All in fun Joe! I’m sure your spell checker was giving you a hand!
Greg
I run mostly LGB metal wheels but I have one car with wheelsets from the old San Val hobbies. They have to be some of the heaviest wheelsets I have ever seen. Appear to be machined from solid brass then chome/nickel plated. I have noticed that those wheelsets get dirty quickly, even though they are metal. My LGB metal sets rarely have any dirt on them. And I run a mix of track powered LGB, Live Steam and Battery powered LGB. I had the chance to get a bunch of solid middle LGB metal wheel sets from a collection at Watts Train Shop and I bought a bunch. There were used but you would never know it, the price was very good. I have heard that plastic wheelsets do not like hot rail that has been sun baked all day! Miketheaspie
David Maynard said:
I paint my wheels a mix of black and ruddy brown, to simulate varying degrees of rust, on my wheels. I was kinda shocked when them AML metal wheels corroded, the colour isn’t quite the rust colour I had in mind.
Greg, the CNC machines wheels don’t look to me to have the correct face profile. And the Bachmann wheels are sintered, but I haven’t had any of them rust on me yet.
Sintered, had to go look that up.
"Definition of SINTERtransitive verb
: to cause to become a coherent mass by heating without melting
intransitive verb
: to undergo sintering
— sinter noun
— sin·ter·abil·i·ty noun
Origin of SINTER
German Sinter slag, cinder, from Old High German sintar — more at cinder
First Known Use: 1871"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sinter
So far, the only metal freight car wheels I have are Bachmann. Those and the HLW Mack and Sparky wheels get painted with RustOleum’s brush-on oxide red primer. And I don’t run enough outside that rust and corrosion are issues; so far.
apparently I did something wrong putting that together, but this thing doesn’t show what it is and I can’t make heads or tails out of the html.
Pretty sure that all bachmann wheels are cast (one reason they get wobbly).
Aml has had a number of different wheels, the pot metal ones will have a whitish corrosion if left moist or in salt air, the sintered steel ones will rust.
Like I said, the older wheels seemed to be machined brass and then plated, usually nickle …
Greg
Greg, the Bachman wheel treads don’t polish up like machined metal wheels do. They always seam to have a pitted and frosted appearance to them. I have had many sets of Bachamnn wheels in service for years (since 02) and I haven’t noticed any getting wobbly on me.
I have one AML boxcar, and yea its getting some light yellow, almost white, corrosion on the wheels. I will need to repaint those wheels a rust colour.
Most of my cars have Bachmann wheels due to their cheaper cost and out of say 100 I have 2 that are wobbly. It might be that they were damaged since they were used when I bought them. I have heard that the early versions of the Bachmann wheels suffered a bit of quality control problems.
I stuck the wobbly ones on a shorty caboose.
From my findings the axles on bachamnn wheels will rust but the wheels themselves stay fine. I plan on leaving my “sacrificial” rolling stock now sporting metal wheels out all Winter so we shall see how they do.
David, if you read all the posts on Bachmann wheels, you would see that some have wobble, depends on when they were bought etc. Some people have had 10% bad ones, some more some less. I’m not going to argue about history, it’s there for the reading. I’m happy for you that you are lucky.
Yes, the cheaper cast wheels will often have a pitted surface, they are cast of pot metal. That should not be surprising.
Yes, you have the earlier AML wheels, I have about 30 or 40 of their cars, so I have a few more “versions” of their products.
Greg
I have none of the troubles mentioned above , after all , I just sit in my armchair and criticise , so no wheels turn and it saves all the heartbreak .
Mike
Here in ‘sunny’ UK I lucked in to ten sets of Lilliput IIm wheelsets, and used eight of 'em on my Newqida ‘Hungarian’ passenger car conversions. They are beautifully made, and look remarkably like Gary Raymond’s fine products, but at 1/3 of the price.
With LGB wheels now hitting $18 a PAIR, I’d need a major win on the lottery to replace all my Bachmann items. I have fifteen home-made and three Bachmann skeleton log cars, all with the cheapo Bachmann wheels. I find that the slight out-of-roundness and ‘lumps’ adds something to the flavour of a backwoods logging train - IMO they all look pretty cool, lumbering around looking worn out.
Funny that mrs tac often notes the same thing about me.
'tac
Ottawa Valley GRS
My perspective: I change most of the wheels to Sierra Valley wheels. Since they’re made from steel - probably Ledloy, a cold rolled steel with lead added for easy machining and a good finish - I paint them with Rustoleum paint.
(http://www.rhb-grischun.ca/P1a/PaintedWheel01_s.jpg)
The yellow marks are the extra touch, The prototype RhB applies them as an instant control if the wheel is freely turning or blocked.
To speed the painting process I made up some jigs
Jigs are styrene and cover the tread and the outside of the flange. To cover the axle stub (bearing surface) while painting I use the correct size heat shrink tubing.
Wow! Where did you get styrene that thick?
tac
tac Foley said:
Wow! Where did you get styrene that thick?
tac
3mm at the local plastic wholesaler’s. Comes in 4x8ft sheets and is a pain to transport in the minivan.
Greg Elmassian said:
David, if you read all the posts on Bachmann wheels, you would see that some have wobble, depends on when they were bought etc. Some people have had 10% bad ones, some more some less. I’m not going to argue about history, it’s there for the reading. I’m happy for you that you are lucky.
Yes, the cheaper cast wheels will often have a pitted surface, they are cast of pot metal. That should not be surprising.
Yes, you have the earlier AML wheels, I have about 30 or 40 of their cars, so I have a few more “versions” of their products.
Greg
Gregg, I did have a few wonky Bachmann wheels right out of the package. But once I fixed them, I haven’t had any problems with them. One set I had, had a bent axle, so I took the axle from a set of Bachmann plastic wheels. For the other ones, I placed the wheel on a wood block with a hole drilled in it. Then I used a metal rod to tap the plastic insert out of the wheel. Once I cleaned the flashing off the plastic insert, I tapped it back into the wheel and the wheel turned true.
I must have misunderstood your post. I had thought you meant that the Bachmann wheels would go wonky on me in service. None have. The earlier Bachman wheels were usually out of gauge, and a wonky one here and there was common. The newer ones seam to be in gauge more consistanly, with very few wonky ones. But I still catch one once in a while.
Hans, when I spray paint my wheels, I put a piece of tape on the axle end, to keep the paint off of the bearing surface. The rest of the wheel (inside and out) and axle get painted. Once the paint has dried for a while, I put the wheels into the truck, with a dab of LGB grease on the axle end, and put the car into a train. After an hour or two of running the rails, the wheel tread, and outside surface of the flange, are nice and shiny.
Yes David, I was probably not clear… wobbly out of the box.
Have not encountered too many bent axles, just wheels that do not run true.
That was about 4 years ago, when I swore off Bachmann wheels for the most part.
Regards, Greg
David Maynard said:
Hans, when I spray paint my wheels, I put a piece of tape on the axle end, to keep the paint off of the bearing surface. The rest of the wheel (inside and out) and axle get painted. Once the paint has dried for a while, I put the wheels into the truck, with a dab of LGB grease on the axle end, and put the car into a train. After an hour or two of running the rails, the wheel tread, and outside surface of the flange, are nice and shiny.
That should be fine.
The reason I use the heat shrink tubing: no sticky residue. 
Never have been thrilled with Bachmann wheelsets. I like the weight of San Vals as they add weight to the car but don’t raise up the center of gravity. Years back when shorter boxcars from LGB and USA Trains were pretty much the only boxcars available, my group would put on a 100 car consist on the modular layout when we could set up that many modules and put a GP-9 on the front, and NW2 in the middle and another GP-9 on the rear. We had to have San Val wheels and hook and loops to do this and watch all four corners of the rectangular layout for derailments.
Metal wheels are now mandatory to operate on the club layout, but most new product comes with metal wheels. My guys tell me that Bachmann metal wheelsets have improved in quality, but like LGB metal wheelsets, just not heavy enough.
Nice thing about San Val wheelsets is that they will fit almost all trucks and can be modified to fit Aristo modern bearing trucks, not sure about Accucraft, AML trucks most or all of which have metal trucks and wheelsets.
In a momentary fit of thrift, one of the wheelsets on an Annie of mine was given an axle with a welded joint in the middle. It was, I suppose, cobbled from the end of one rod and the beginning of another. Naturally, this set was eccentric enough to make the whole tender look very silly as it wobbled down the track.
Now, in a rare example of two wrongs making a right, one of the two wheels on this axle had its hole off center too… I was actually able to twist that wheel so that by averaging the two flaws I eliminated the wobble. I then secured the twisted wheel with a drop of crazy, and the tender has run smoothly ever since! Go figure…