Original page created on 12/09/2014.
Replacing the rear drawbar (continued)
Mounting the pins
First, the round pin is placed into a mini-drill and its upper end is chamfered with a file. The square pins are already chamfered. To ensure that they are perpendicular to the drawbar, the pins are held in a block of wood drilled at diam. 0.8 mm to a depth of 4 mm. Soldering is done on the underside of the drawbar.
As for the square pins (photo), they are first pressed into their insulating support so that they protrude about 4 mm above the surface of the drawbar. The support will be removed after soldering.
Preparation of the coupling
The coupling (a Fleischmann Profi), held in the vice by a recovery NEM box (Ribu), has two 0.8 mm diam. holes drilled 1 mm from the rear and, of course, 2.54 mm — 1/10’ — centre distance. Then its normalized tail is cut. It will be mounted on the drawbar already installed on the railcar, so that it can be adjusted to the right height.
Final result
It remains to pass a coat of grey paint on the new drawbar, to assemble the parts and to mount back the whole on the railcar. To make this easier, I release the rear bogie and let it hanging at the end of its wires, although this is not very wise… Don’t forget to mount the battery box back before the final assembly.
Et voilà, as we say in France (and in the USA too)…
The drawbar is too low by about 0.5 mm, due to the original drawbar clearance. But it’s possible to catch up by playing on the brass piece folding. I have taken this into account in the dimensions given on the previous page. It’s the destiny of prototypes to remain perfectible, and we make practically only prototypes!
