# Anyone have a fix?



## lownote (Jan 3, 2008)

About a year ago I bought two Aristo trucks with stainless steel wheels to put in my RS-3. They turned out to be unusable. The wheels were far out of gage. Here's the back to back spacing:

1.572
1.556


1.555
1.552


And here is the spec:

Maximum 1.594" Aristo gauge actual 1.594" G1MRA Standard 1.594" NMRA Standard maximum And Minimum 1.575" Aristo gauge actual 1.574" G1MRA Standard 1.570" NMRA standard minimum



Does anyone know of a fix? The aristo wheels fit onto a tapered half axle. The half axle is set into a plastic sleeve with a gear, USAT style. It looks like it might be possible, but not easy, to adjust the gage by pulling those half axles out slightly. Anyone ever try this?


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## Trains (Jan 2, 2008)

I pulled them out on my USA engines. When the gears cracked, I pulled the wheel and axle out of the gear.
Reinforced them with brass tube, then pushed the axles back in with a vice.


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## lownote (Jan 3, 2008)

Thank you--although cracked axles is not the problem here, it's being out of gage. I'm not sure it's even possible to move the aristo half-axles out of the [email protected] url(http://www.mylargescale.com/Providers/HtmlEditorProviders/CEHtmlEditorProvider/Load.ashx?type=style&file=SyntaxHighlighter.css);@import url(/providers/htmleditorproviders/cehtmleditorprovider/dnngeneral.css);


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## lownote (Jan 3, 2008)

Wow--I just took an aristo block apart and was able to easily pull the half axles out of the sleeve. I guess I have my answer about adjusting gage. Now I just need to figure out a way to keep them in gage in the sleeve. The USAT fix may be relevant afte all


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## lownote (Jan 3, 2008)

Ok, for what it's worth: I opened the thing up, pulled the half axles out of the gear sleeve, and yes, one side was cracked. So I ended up doing the USAT brass sleeve fix. Managed to se the gage to a reasonable gap. Now we'll see how it runs. 

Amazing, isn't it--USAT has a well known, well documented problem with axles splitting, and Aristo manages to duplicate it.


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## Gary Armitstead (Jan 2, 2008)

Mike,

I used this stuff on my 1.5" ten-wheeler. It locks threaded parts (but also works with un-threaded as well). The nice thing is about this product is that the parts can be taken apart later with just simple tools around the house.

http://www.henkelna.com/adhesives/p...0000000HX3

Might work in your application. Never know.


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## Michael Glavin (Jan 2, 2009)

Gary, 

The axle/wheel halve gear/couplings are of some unknown Engineering plastic, in this circumstance Aristocraft and or USA Trains. 

Something to consider with Engineering plastic type matrixes, most if not all thread locker adhesives are NOT plastic safe!!! 

The product you suggested is great stuff, but should be used with metal substrates only in my experince. 

Michael Glavin


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## Jerry Barnes (Jan 2, 2008)

I drilled through and used a brass pin to hold the axles in place.


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## Gary Armitstead (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By Michael Glavin on 26 Jan 2012 10:29 AM 
Gary, 

The axle/wheel halve gear/couplings are of some unknown Engineering plastic, in this circumstance Aristocraft and or USA Trains. 

Something to consider with Engineering plastic type matrixes, most if not all thread locker adhesives are NOT plastic safe!!! 

The product you suggested is great stuff, but should be used with metal substrates only in my experince. 

Michael Glavin 

Good point Michael.


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## lownote (Jan 3, 2008)

For what it's worth I installed the truck with the re-gaged wheels in an eggliner. It stayed on the track just fine, but power pickup was very poor--it stuttered a lot. And then I noticed that the stainless wheels were pitting--in an eggliner! Lots of black pitting on two of the wheels especially. I assume, for the info on Greg and George Schreyer's pages, that they were pitting because the motor was drawing a lot of amps. So I swapped the truck back out.

Weird. I'd have to say these trucks were the single worst purchase I've ever made in Large Scale


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## Trains (Jan 2, 2008)

You would think they would have come out with a better motor by now. I run a A-B-A LGB set up and it only draws 2 amps.


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Good motors cost money. If Aristo charged what LGB did, they would have no problems having nice motors. 

(And half of us could not afford to be in the hobby!). 

Can't fault Aristo here. 

Greg


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