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Airfix 14xx - tyres and wheels...


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Managed to get my elderly 14xx to run fairly well after requartering and cleaning all the 1980s gunge from the chassis.

 

I was going to remove the tyres - can someone tell me if there is a groove (it appears not)?

 

Aside that the wheels are not square to axles, despite best endeavours with milling vices and suchlike to square them up - they just seem to spring back untrue.

 

I happen to have some Alan Gibson drivers available and wonder if it's worth swapping the originals out? Second question: is the gear wheel a press fit on the axle?

 

EDIT: should have added that I have added 1mm nylon washers to each driven axle to reduce the enormous sideplay. This seems to have improved running, although is getting close to a disadvantage given the wobble...

 

Thanks.

Edited by 97xx
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Years ago, I replaced the Airfix chassis with a kit from Perserverance.  It made a massive difference:

 

P1010005.JPG.a95af48e154b2b573935f70c510e7bc6.JPG

 

These days, High Level have an excellent chassis kit:

 

http://www.highlevelkits.co.uk/14xxpage.html

 

Chassis replacement is a pretty expensive proposition though, what with the chassis itself, gearbox (HL boxes are superb), motor and wheels.

 

In any case I would recommend Markits wheels since they are all metal and, most of all, have a square boss held on with nut.  Foolproof quartering.  I never could get the hang of Gibson/Ultrascale wheels which rely on friction fit helped by Loctite.

 

John

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To answer the OP question, yes there is a groove that the tyres sit in.  I removed mine many years ago as I thought it was rocking on the middle axle. The loco seemed to work alright, although I felt it might be grabbing on bullhead rail.  The thing doesn't run at all now.

 

Edited by BR60103
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8 hours ago, BR60103 said:

I removed mine many years ago as I thought it was rocking on the middle axle.

I had exactly that suspicion with a chassis I got off ebay recently, but after close examination I suspect the problem lies in the trailing axle moving up and down. It really requires a spring to force it down (or the body up, same difference). Other jobs have claimed priority so I won't be able to experiment for a while yet.

 

 

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2 minutes ago, AdamsRadial said:

I had exactly that suspicion with a chassis I got off ebay recently, but after close examination I suspect the problem lies in the trailing axle moving up and down. It really requires a spring to force it down (or the body up, same difference). Other jobs have claimed priority so I won't be able to experiment for a while yet.

 

 

There is a small single leaf spring that rubs on the trailing axle, and I gave it a little more lift to improve balance and encourage more reliable pickup from the untyred axle up front.

Edited by 97xx
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I think the Airfix body is not too bad especially when compared to what was available when it came out. Could you not Mill out a couple of new frames, buy some decent wheels, motors are now cheap as chips. The body deserves a better chassis

 

124.jpeg.5ec0c8a54689d280bb35dddc62da26cc.jpeg

 

This is a chassis someone scratch built for a Wills N7, simple and efficient even if the motor mount/gearbox is a bit over engineered. Simple and far better than the Jinty chassis the kit was designed to use. For some unknown reason the builder stopped the build. I now have an etched chassis for the loco, I will reuse the wheels on the new chassis. If you have the ability the solution can be quite simple.

 

For me a case of having to buy an etched chassis 

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Actually John, I think I would machine them up myself - I've got the equipment and the materials. I'd be inclined to use the Airfix 5-pole motor as I think it's well made and a smooth runner.

 

Ideally it wants a smallish Mashima but not sure again I want to justify £30 on that on top. I'm simply not fitting some Chinese rubbish if I'm burning my hours on the job!

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2 hours ago, 97xx said:

Actually John, I think I would machine them up myself - I've got the equipment and the materials. I'd be inclined to use the Airfix 5-pole motor as I think it's well made and a smooth runner.

 

Ideally it wants a smallish Mashima but not sure again I want to justify £30 on that on top. I'm simply not fitting some Chinese rubbish if I'm burning my hours on the job!

 

 

Chris at High level sells some tiny 10mm open frame motors for £9 I have one and they are fine. I bought a couple of 12 x 30 round can motors £4 inc postage they are slow revving 1.5 mm shafts, or one of the open frame 1024 Handshu or something like that.

 

With Mashimas at £30+ I would buy a cureless from High Level. Keep an eye open on eBay.

 

Sometimes a buy a cheap kit for the wheels and motor and sell on the kit

 

Latest buy is a 57xx etched chassis minus coupling rods and brake gear (as it happens I have spares for both, 6 x Markit 18 mm wheels and 4 x 15 mm wheels, plus a Mainline 57xx body. All for    £22.93 inc postage,

 

As it happens I have a a set of High Level hornblocks to try out, nice timing.

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I believe the centre drivers had the tyres. I had 2 of these, one of which suffered from the stripped gear wheel issue, so couldn't be used . So, I used the front wheel set from the second loco, as the centre drivers on the first loco (below on the left / also top feed removed). Still running after all these years.IMG_1103.JPG.8a7ce47a0fa070a5565347255578fa17.JPG

I was then left with with the other one, now with potentially 2 sets of wheels with tyres. I also had an old clapped out Airfix 4F, and noticed the wheel were almost the same diameter as the 14XX. So, I removed the motor, and replaced the wheels with those from the 4F, making it a push along model. As it happened, I had a Tenshodo bogie in the spares box, so fitted this to an Airfix Autocoach. Runs great.

1444951315_IMG_2982(2).jpg.aa705bc4491bc9c45236bef8ea009032.jpg

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7 minutes ago, DKGL said:

I believe the centre drivers had the tyres. I had 2 of these, one of which suffered from the stripped gear wheel issue, so couldn't be used . So, I used the front wheel set from the second loco, as the centre drivers on the first loco (below on the left / also top feed removed). Still running after all these years.IMG_1103.JPG.8a7ce47a0fa070a5565347255578fa17.JPG

I was then left with with the other one, now with potentially 2 sets of wheels with tyres. I also had an old clapped out Airfix 4F, and noticed the wheel were almost the same diameter as the 14XX. So, I removed the motor, and replaced the wheels with those from the 4F, making it a push along model. As it happened, I had a Tenshodo bogie in the spares box, so fitted this to an Airfix Autocoach. Runs great.

1444951315_IMG_2982(2).jpg.aa705bc4491bc9c45236bef8ea009032.jpg

 

 

Now this is the type of model making I enjoy reading about. I guess most would have given up on the model so making a good one out of two locos was a good idea, then repairing the other with spares from a different loco plus making a truly push and pull loco, was a superb bit of lateral thinking. 

 

Its a great pity the revised style of chassis from the 80's make it so hard to repair them without resulting in a massive chassis build 

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On 05/06/2020 at 13:29, hayfield said:

 

 

Its a great pity the revised style of chassis from the 80's make it so hard to repair them without resulting in a massive chassis build 

 

You mean like my Mainline Manor John...!

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97xx

 

In my humble view the rot set in when the likes of Airfix and Mainline came on to the scene breaking the mould and stranglehold Triang Hornby had on the market, whilst the quality of the detail was sadly lacking, their strengths were their robustness and repairability. I have a Triang chassis (well frames) widened to EM gauge sporting Romford wheels, D11 motor driving the front wheel leaving the cab free with a Wills E2 body, there are many more complete Triang locos and mechanisms still in use.  

 

I like a lot eagerly bought Airfix and Mainline locos (kept away from Lima) not knowing the problems we would encounter in the future, The detail was far superior than we were used to but turned out difficult to repair  

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 30/05/2020 at 20:07, 97xx said:

I was going to remove the tyres - can someone tell me if there is a groove (it appears not)?

 

I tried removing the tyres from my late 90s Hornby version but it ran worse so I put new ones back on again. It’s running is tolerable.

 

I tend to agree with the earlier post that blamed the trailing axle. One day I’ll go the HighLevel route...

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  • 6 months later...

Looking again at the Airfix 14xx, I know that the preferred route is a HL chassis but that's quite an investment. 

I'm not averse to a full rebuild as I think the body justifies it, but am considering some possible steps first.

 

The wheels on mine are pretty eccentric, so something needs doing and as often happens with shoddy wheels, no amount of tweaking is getting them true. The B2B seems very small as well...

 

It appears that a step down the ultimate route and which wouldn't be a waste of money could be to go to Romfords and brass bush the drive axle. I've already put washers in to reduce sideplay and this helps with the plunger contacts.

 

Does the plastic gear push on and therefore off of the axle does anyone know?

 

Thoughts?

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OK, to answer my own Q, the plastic worm gear is push fit and comes off easily. It rather usefully is still a decent push fit on a standard 1/8" axle, so making experimenting convenient.

 

It would appear the design process went like this:

  1. On the plus side, lots of metal and thus weight.
  2. On the minus side, huge 5-pole motor could pull a large item up a decent hill but is way out over trailing axle
  3. So, CofG is somewhere probably behind middle axle
  4. Big motor means cardan drive to front axle.
  5. Middle axle will need tyres to give grip
  6. Middle axle therefore better have zero float so it's always on the track
  7. Trailing axle can be sprung to throw weight forward on to tyred axle
  8. But wait, front axle will need to float a fair bit as we want middle axle to have some decent grip

 

The consequences appear to be that the whole thing seesaws along as the chassis rotates about the fixed middle axle. Oh and this means pickup is rubbish as the one wheelset hard on the track is insulated with tyres. As the loco moved forward middle axle grips, rear spring fights shift in CofG, front axle loses pickup.

 

Rinse and repeat.

 

My plan is as follows. No doubt this might promote a few guffaws of 'been there, done that', but here goes...

  1. Use decent (Romford) wheels for a start (my original are eccentric)
  2. Fit bearings to front axle and fix them solid (which might reduce gnashing of geartrain)
  3. Fit bearings to rear axle. use 1/8" to 2mm reducer bearings (as original trailing axle 1/8", replacement 2mm)
  4. Fix these solid too, checking dead square to front.
  5. Deepen axle slots for middle axle (the one that had no float)
  6. Drill tiny holes at tops of axle slots to put tiny Alan Gibson plunger pickup springs in (simply as I have some spare)
  7. Shim out front and trailing axles to remove almost all sideplay.

The idea being that I now have no CofG shift, decent wheels, plus a little give in middle wheelset.

 

I will report back.

 

If this doesn't work, then it's Comet/HL rebuild and nothing wasted apart from my time...

 

 

Edited by 97xx
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  • 2 weeks later...

I have two pairs of Romford  21mm wheels 16.5 axles and crankpins  which I was going to fit on an Airfix  14XX  . I found a set of  Sharman wheels so fitted them instead.   The Romfords are for sale if anyone is in need of them.

 

Rob

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