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 Posted - June 06 2015 : 4:03:13 PM
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A friend asked me to try to fix this for him a few months ago.
I know, I should have been done with it already.
I suffer from inertia, OK?
Anyway, it's the dreaded split gear syndrome again.
This time, it's a Climax.
So he bought some NWSL replacement gears, hoping these would do.
I never got that far, as the shaft from the gear box was spinning free.
You can see in the first pic, the gear I hopefully fixed with epoxy.
That seemed OK, then I found the gimballed joint was split too! AARGH!
Epoxy won't work on it, as it's Delrin.
So today I tried wrapping a twisted wire around it to squeeze it closed.
No luck, as both electrical wire and brass are too brittle to take much of a twisting.
Any suggestions, or should I throw it in the ocean and tell him somebody stole it?
Evan
 
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Country:  Canada ~
Posts: 505 ~
Member Since: August 09 2014 ~
Last Visit: October 11 2022
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Posted - June 06 2015 : 4:48:10 PM
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| Press a brass sleeve over it, made from K&S Shapes brass tubing...
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Posted - June 07 2015 : 01:37:57 AM
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And remember the Commandment: Friends don't let Friends buy Bachmann.
Friday ops, I had a Botch 4-6-0 on the bench, followed by a Botch 2-truck Shay with split u-joint housing (had parts...used screws instead of rivets to attach to the shafts), then a journal cover holding the shaft to the truck crumbled, followed by a K with a gearbox issue...fixed that....
Axle gears (4-4-0 new gear last week), u-joints, trucks, any piece that can possibly suffer from Regrind (commonly called "plastic rot"), lead trucks...just in case, I have saved all of it. Bags and boxes full of failed regrind plastic and shrinking plastic axle gears (split).
Some day I'll hold a seminar and tell folks what not to buy.
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Posts: 350 ~
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Last Visit: December 24 2022
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Posted - June 12 2015 : 9:30:18 PM
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Try squeezing the shaft hard enough to square it off. It might give it more grip within the cracked joint.
If that fails, these couplings are pretty easy to make from scratch. All you need is a brass tube and a piece of wire. Flatten the middle of the wire (and ONLY the middle, maybe 3/16" worth), and bend it into a U shape, then bend the ends of the U shape out to become the pins for the joint. Solder the flattened middle to the end of a piece of brass tube, and paint the whole thing black. You now have a replacement coupling!
My Bachmann Shay had the split gear issue. A few gears from NWSL, and it's one amazing steam engine! Bachmann may not be at the top end with reliability, but there's a reason they're one of my favorite manufacturers. I'll recommend Bachmann's more reliable products any day.
Darth Santa Fe, doing weird and challenging projects for the fun of it!
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Posted - June 13 2015 : 11:10:54 PM
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Thanks to both Shaygetz and Darth.
I'll try to make the replacement.
Evan
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Posts: 505 ~
Member Since: August 09 2014 ~
Last Visit: October 11 2022
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