Author Topic: ER Shark coupler conversion from Rapido to Unimate?  (Read 1268 times)

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Iain

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Re: ER Shark coupler conversion from Rapido to Unimate?
« Reply #15 on: December 05, 2023, 02:24:24 PM »
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Drill a hole at the end of each of the frame halves to tap 00-90 and then screw in a piece of styrene with a tab sticking out to mount the coupler box on; you'll get a solid mounting and you can space the coupler as needed.
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Maletrain

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Re: ER Shark coupler conversion from Rapido to Unimate?
« Reply #16 on: December 09, 2023, 09:58:43 AM »
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Now that I have finished putting the Unimates on all 8 of the ends of these 4 units, I have a couple more tips to pass along regarding getting the covers off the Rapido coupler boxes.  There were a couple of real buggers in the last few.

1.  Rather than squeezing the cover on both sides, I found it is best to place the tweezers so that the pressure is only on one side of the cover, and the other side puts pressure on the part of the box that is connected to the truck. That makes it easiest to squeeze one tab out of its hole in the side of the truck part of the box and then rock it up away from the truck part of the box.

2. With one side free, it is usually quite easy to gently work the tab out of the hole on the other side of the box.  But, in one case out of these 8, there was some sort of burr on the tab, and it just did not want to come out of its hole, even though it seemed very loose once the other side was free.  I used an Xacto blade as a thin lever, inserting it between the cover and the box base to pry the cover sideways from the base, and that worked quite easily. 

3.  In the case of the burr, I could see it with a 10x loop, and tried to remove it with the Xacto blade, but enough remained that it was very difficult to get it back into its hole.  So, I first inserted the tab on other side back into its hole, then rocked the cover down flat, aligning the tab with its hole and sort of massaging it into place.  Eventually, it snapped into place.
 
I checked with the 10X loop that I could see the cover tabs were seated in their holes in the truck part of the boxes before calling it done. In one case, where there was an extra small tab, I had the cover down flat but the tab was not in its hole, and the cover would have popped off if I had pulled on the coupler.