Okay, so I'm finally home and had some time to go through my parts bin.
I managed to find the original LifeLike wheels, and I can confirm that they are exactly the same diameter as Peteski measured for his GP20 wheels. I think the only reason that this was an issue in my case was because my two GP60s have custom plows, and these were fitted prior to the re-wheeling.
Here is a quick phone pic of the side profile of one of the LifeLike shells on a Fox Valley Models chassis — you can see that the plow clearance is very tight:
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In my case the 0.15mm lowering was enough for the plow to hit the rails. However, I think that it's entirely likely that this will not be an issue with the stock plow.
Sorry
@tehachapifan I've really not been as helpful here as I would have wished here…
- I can't verify compatibility of the Kato axles with the original trucks because they are goneburger
- I can't verify the clearance of the stock LifeLike plow height with the Kato wheels in any truck because I don't have a stock shell
All I can (unhelpfully) say is that a Fox Valley GP60 chassis does fit under a LifeLike shell if you remove the Fox Valley spacers and replace them with some tape to get just the right clearance for the flywheels, and you retain the Fox Valley fuel tank. The long hood is a very tight fit, but it works.
It's an expensive solution, but this gave me the correct trucks, nice Code 40 compatible wheels, a plug-in DCC ready frame, while letting me keep the already detailed shells (credit to Steve4Painting for the lovely detailing and ditch light install — done long before the FVM release)…
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