I managed to con persuade Andy York to donate his production Western to undergo the following butchery, thanks Andy.
The raw materials, the Ultrascale wheel for the Heljan Western on the left obviously.
The Dapol axles need the stub axles and wheels removing and discarding, keeping the central drive muff and the brass axle bearings.
The Ultrascale axles need stripping down into their component parts by removing the wheels and gear cog.
The dimension across the outside face of the Ultrascale wheel is 22.2mm or thereabouts, so when the axle has been cut either side of the centre knurling to give 2 stub axles, after tidying the cut end up, these need to be inserted centrally into the Dapol muff to give the same overall dimension.
As the Dapol wheel is all steel and the Ultrascale one is plastic centred, a method of picking up current between the brass collector bush and the Heljan wheel rim is required.
My rather inelegant solution was to drill a 0.5mm hole in the thin shoulder of the brass bush and solder in a piece of 0.3mm phosphor bronze wire.
The bushes are then slipped on the previously assembled stub axles followed by the wheels and the p/b wire is adjusted to bear on the back of the wheel.
There is a boss on the rear of the Heljan wheel which needs about 1mm cutting off to allow a comfortable fit and the the wheel to turn freely.
The whole assembly is clipped back in the bogie block, and voila, an EM Dapol Western.
As can be seen, the outer 2 axles have a full metal rear face whereas the centre one only has a metal rim, so a slight variation in p/b strip bending is required.
Hopefully the pictures should fill in any missing information.
Apologies are due to Dapol Dave and Brian Rogers, who, at this moment are contacting hit squads to ensure I don't deface any more of their products.
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