# Aristo-Craft's 1st generation lowered freight car floor, Kadee couplers, Electralube



## Ted Doskaris (Oct 7, 2008)

Aristo-Craft's 1st generation lowered freight car floor, Kadee couplers, Electralube lubricant damage
Ted Doskaris

I have been upgrading my "G" scale freight train cars to Kadee body mount couplers and have reach the point of addressing cars that include Aristo's early version "lowered floors". 

Shown below is an example Aristo-Craft first generation lowered floor that I had installed in a Southern Pacific 40 foot box car around the time the floors were first made available some years ago.









Shown below are two examples of identical Aristo Southern Pacific 40 foot box cars that had been retrofitted with first generation lowered floors that I modified to accept Kadee 830 coupler assemblies.









Modifications included removing the rib located on the pad area at the ends of the floor and adding a 1/10 inch thick spacer (approx.) for mounting the Kadee 830s.

The car on the left is shown with Aristo Bettendorf trucks having ART-29111B metal wheels retrofitted whilst the car on the right has USA Trains brand Bettendorf trucks (R2033) with USAT black metal wheels. Car height is virtually the same when using either Aristo or USAT trucks with their respective metal wheels.


Aristo's Electralube - residual damage:

The reason I tried the USAT trucks on the Aristo cars has to do with detrimental experience upon using Aristo's Electralube lubricant within the journal box bushings. This issue was brought forth and covered at length in a thread on the Aristo General Forum sometime ago.

Since I started working on the cars, I discovered additional, latent Electralube damaged truck frames, so I tried using the USAT truck replacements on some of the cars just to see how they worked - which was very well.








*Warning: Do not use Aristo's Electralube conductive lubricant on Aristo's older production run soft plastic truck parts - even though the booklet provided with the car states otherwise.*









To Aristo's credit, their newer production runs use a nylon based material that is not adversely affected by the Electralube lubricant. I noticed this material is comparatively harder and similar to what USAT appears to have in their truck parts.


Kadee 830 installation methods with details:

For more information about the Kadee 830 installation on Aristo's first generation lowered floors, see vignette title, 
"Aristo 1st gen floors and Kadee body mountshttp://www.elmassian.com/trains-mai...7/aristo-1st-gen-floors-and-kadee-body-mounts" hosted for me by Greg E. on his web site.

-Ted


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## Torby (Jan 2, 2008)

*RE: Aristo-Craft's 1st generation lowered freight car floor, Kadee couplers, Electralube*

Thanks for photos on mounting the couplers.


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## Ted Doskaris (Oct 7, 2008)

*RE: Aristo-Craft's 1st generation lowered freight car floor, Kadee couplers, Electralube*

Tom, 

You're welcome, 

-Ted


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## Doug C (Jan 14, 2008)

*RE: Aristo-Craft's 1st generation lowered freight car floor, Kadee couplers, Electralube*

Thanks Ted ! 

it must be the angle of the shot 'cause the SP box car floor on the right looks higher showing more white 'round the wheels than the left. Even the htought the way I read ya that both are samples of being with lower flr. ?!

I'll stay away from the electralube and use either graphite or a labelle product (105? i believe is downstairs), maybe even a drop of lgb oil. Although the squeaks outside sound like prototypical brakes and also when i hear it I know the consist hasn't stopped for some reason (hopefully not a derail)









doug c


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## Ted Doskaris (Oct 7, 2008)

*RE: Aristo-Craft's 1st generation lowered freight car floor, Kadee couplers, Electralube*

Doug, 

The SP car shown on the right has the USAT brand trucks installed as described below the picture. Both cars have the Aristo lowered floors. 

The USAT trucks are slightly smaller than the Aristo trucks of the car on the left. Also, the shine of the Aristo metal wheels makes the difference look more so. 
The smaller USAT truck side frames, therefore, have more space between them and the car's underside when compared to the larger Aristo ones. 
As the picture shows, both cars line up with their couplers. 

The USAT trucks are more realistic when scaled up as they would be a prototypical to a 5 foot., 6 inch wheel base that was most common for Bettendorf trucks used on the 40 foot cars. 

The Aristo trucks scale up to about 5 foot, 8 inches. Though there were some prototypical cars with this larger size, it was not common. 

-Ted


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## GaryY (Jan 2, 2008)

*RE: Aristo-Craft's 1st generation lowered freight car floor, Kadee couplers, Electralube*

Thanks Ted for the analysis... I certainly appreciate your informative reviews.

I like the USAT wheels as well. I recently tried a few sets when the Aristo-Craft were unavailable and converted a some of my plastic wheeled Aristo cars. I am very pleased with the way they look and track. The flat black makes them look less obtrusive. 

Gary


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## Torby (Jan 2, 2008)

*RE: Aristo-Craft's 1st generation lowered freight car floor, Kadee couplers, Electralube*

Not sure I'd quibble over 2 scale inches, 1/14th of an inch. After all, our rails are 4mm too close together.


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## fwtxrr (Oct 14, 2009)

*RE: Aristo-Craft's 1st generation lowered freight car floor, Kadee couplers, Electralube*

labelle 106, plastic compatible grease works great!


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## Ward H (Jan 5, 2008)

*RE: Aristo-Craft's 1st generation lowered freight car floor, Kadee couplers, Electralube*

A couple of years ago I discovered USAT had 20 axles for $50 at ECLSTS. That is $10/car. I bought 40 axles at a time and converted all of my 40' box cars to USAT wheels. Now anything new with plastic wheels gets the USAT wheels. They were up to $55 last year at York.


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## aceinspp (Jan 2, 2008)

*RE: Aristo-Craft's 1st generation lowered freight car floor, Kadee couplers, Electralube*

As Ted mentioned stay away from using the lub from AC it will destroy your trucks. If I can find other metal wheels that will work other than AC and are cheaper i will buy them. I have use Bachman and USAT with good results. Later RJD


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