ExactRail Autoflood Wobble

[High Hood]

While these cars are absolutely gorgeous, I've noticed some have a very noticeable wobble problem. The wobbling cars also seem not to roll as freely as the more stable cars. When compared to my other freight cars, the ER trucks have severe diagonal play to them. Has anyone encountered this before? I'd appreciate any ideas on how to improve their rolling performance.

[nkalanaga]

I had a couple Exact Rail cars where the wheelsets themselves wobbled, as though the wheels were off-center.  I finally replaced the wheels on those.

I don't know just what you mean by "diagonal play".  If the trucks themselves are loose (bolster hole too large?) you'd probably have to replace the trucks.

If the axles are too short, and have too much side play, you can try gently bending the sideframes in.  Too much and it will pinch the axles, but a little bit will often improve things.  I have to do that with a lot of my old KD/MT trucks when installing ESM wheels.

[samusi01]

I found mine to be terrible. After a couple months of frustrating testing, I ended up installing ESM wheelsets on every car. Much better results. One of the issues I noted was the ER axles are too thick, resulting in contact with the frame and increasing rolling resistance. On some cars, the thickness of the outer axle also lifted the inner one slightly, causing derailments.

The cars themselves are quite nice, though.

[nkalanaga]

So it wasn't just me...

[High Hood]

Thanks for the help! I'll have to try out those ESM wheelsets. Out of my first twelve cars, seven seem to be okay while the rest need some shop time. I've got another twelve that's supposed to arrive tomorrow, so it'll be interesting to see how many of that batch have problems. I do have one car I may need to contact ExactRail about. Even on a flat surface it will lean about 10-15 degrees! I'm really not sure what could be causing this.

[Englewood]

I bought 4 of their latest run of FBOXes and didn't notice any wobbling. I was about to order a couple hundred of their wheelsets, maybe I should do a little more research.

[nkalanaga]

You've probably already checked, but is the floor in straight on the leaning car?

[High Hood]

Well my second set of twelve arrived today. So out of my twenty-four cars I have the following: 11 cars that ran great, 4 that ran okay, 4 that need some attention, and 5 shop cars.

I found another leaning car in the second batch. On the first car I found that the rotary end platform was loose. I tightened it up, but it still did not help.

[Englewood]

Did you buy these cars new or used?

[High Hood]

New

[High Hood]

Time for an update. My ESM wheelsets order arrived. So far I’ve just worked on one car, however with the ESM wheelsets it now rolls freely and the wobble is gone!