Dimensions of Full Throttle Bowser Buckler Z scale couplers?

[mmagliaro]

Great info, Chris.

I heard that you had cut the back off the 905 and I tried that first.  I had a lot more spring exposed than you, but
that still wasn't enough.  My pilot is really down low and pulled back in close to the pilot truck, so this is going
to be hard.  That's my reward for trying to keep it close to scale.   

But yes, I will check and see if it would work for a 905 that is cut off at the screw mount.

[nkalanaga]

Chris333:  I've done that for years, and it's surprising how little of the box is really needed for the coupler to work.  As long as the spring doesn't fall out it's fine.

The same trick works on the MT 1023/1025 couplers.

[Lemosteam]

Seems like the Bowesr would also work in a groove deep enough for the cat whisker springs, with no bottom or top?

David, in your couplere experiments did you try to thin the Bowser coupler whisker to see how much is removed to make it magnetically uncouple? (I enjoyed your writeup BTW)

[DKS]

David, in your couplere experiments did you try to thin the Bowser coupler whisker to see how much is removed to make it magnetically uncouple? (I enjoyed your writeup BTW)

The Bowser coupler, unfortunately, is not capable of magnetic operation without significant redesign. For starters, consider the fact that the trip pin can spin around inside the knuckle because it's perfectly round (i.e., it has no flat areas as do MTL trip pins). As for the whisker on the knuckle, I do not think it could be thinned enough to set the proper tension; I believe it would have to be relocated so that it could be longer and thinner. And while I'm not certain, I believe the whiskers on the shank would also require relocating, lengthening and thinning so that the coupler had less side-to-side motion resistance.

I had sent recommendations to Bowser addressing all of these concerns, thinking I had received pre-production samples. Alas, I had instead received production samples; they'd already done a run of several thousand. My recommendations would not have required complete re-tooling, but instead involved revisions to existing tooling in order to save money, but that didn't seem to inspire them to bother improving the product.