Quartering the wheels on MEHANO 2-8-2 mikado

[carpediem4570]

Merry Christmas To All:

This is the continuing tale of hard wiring my HO steam locomotive to dcc.

After getting my MEHANO 2-8-2 Mikado steam locomotive from the presidents choice train sets of the 1990’s hard wired to dcc and running, I noticed the loco wobbles side to side quite violently now.  A little research suggested perhaps the wheels were out of quarter. 

The standard position for wheel quartering are 6 and 9 o’clock.  Or 12 and 3 depending which way you are looking at the steam engine.

To my horror, I saw the wheels were set to 6 and 3, not 6 and 9.


I have all 11 presidents choice, (PC), train sets with a couple extra. One of those extras is a second Mikado.  Its wheels are also set to 6 and 3. And it to has quite the wobble.

I looked at a couple other PC steam engines and there wheels are set to 6 and 9.  They ran smoother.

Then I pull out the 4-6-2 Pacific Express.  Wheels are quartered at 6 and 3 and runs as smooth as can be with no wobble.

My question:  do the wheels need to be quartered to 6 and 9 or do they just need to be quartered.

Kind regards and Happy New Year,

Max

[G8B4Life]

Since your not driving the wheels with pistons they don't have to be quartered (90 degrees) at all, the angle just has to be the same across all the axles. Another way to look at it, a 3 cylinder loco is "quartered" at 120 degrees.

Wobbling (as opposed to binding because the "quartering" angles are not the same across all axles) sounds like something isn't concentric, like an axle not in it's slot properly as an example. If your able to disengage the motor from the drive train it could be helpful to push the engine by hand and watch the wheel and side rod motion carefully.

As this is not RailPro specific, I'm moving the thread to General Discussion.

- Tim