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Any thought for allowing electrical pickup? I am in the starting phase of putting LED lights in a cab-car of these units (headlight & flashing ditch, red rear class lights). I have the Streamlined Backshop Wheel Wiper kit for use with the standard trucks, but if these trucks pan out, would love to improve the overall performance.
There are the bronze Bergeon bushings, right? Durability and pickup will be much better from those than with brass.
So, if I understand this correctly, the bushings will be mounted in the frame such that they cannot slide inward and touch the plastic axle tube? And the slight lateral play in the wheelset will be accomplished by letting the axle slide back in forth in the bushings, so the wheel backs can touch the outside faces of the bushings only (not the frame) and the bushings cannot move inward to touch the axle tube? If so, I completely agree that is the way to go. (And it's exactly how I designed my 0-6-0 engine project, by the way). As long is there is just a hair of "play" or "float" of those bushings in the frame, they will happily fine a place to align themselves on that axle and it should roll smooth.
If you want to, you can lay one of those bushings flat on a piece of 400 grit sandpaper and swirl it around with your finger to sand it thinner. Peteski is correct in that the thinner you make that bearing, the less friction you will have.
This is a great project for so many reasons. Watching with great interest!
My idea for electrical pick up was to solder a magnet wire to the outside of each bushing, coming off perpendicularly. Once snapped in the frame the wire would be open to the exposed part at the bottom and won't affect fit or come any where near any moving parts. I'm going to mount my cab car wheelsets with Micro Trains king pins. The centre can be drilled out, all four magnet wires fed up through the centre, and the truck will swivel with out any issue. Apparently NEO Lube conducts and it was suggested that perhaps a bit of that in each bushing would improve the efficiency and promote conductivity.
Can magnet wire handle enough current for a decoder? I have always thought it was limited to max of between 20-30ma. Would your idea still be viable with decoder wire (36 awg)?
Peteski, I'm planning to use drilled out Micro Trains king pins to router the wires up into the car. Are you saying to use bare conductors, and then transition to an insulated conductor before all four come together in the kingpin?Nkalanga, that's a good idea as well. Does anyone know what, if any, risk there is to soldering directly to the bushing? Deformation perhaps?Craig