Tom, are you talking about the old AM 85's smooth sided Pullman Standard streamliners or the current 75' Budd cars?
The P/S cars date from the 1980's and are featherweights. The only metal on them are the wheels, axles and truck mounting screws. Their underframes are fairly thin plastic, lack any detail and are somewhat annoyingly flexible.
The Budd's have cast metal underframes and are relatively heavy. Even my AM Northern (scale wheels, no "Gription" traction tires) will occasionally slip hauling 7 Budd cars.
Anyways, back to couplers...
As I mentioned before, around the last year or so I began to double up the 802's centering spring. This helps to mitigate the slack and doesn't affect the coupler's operation. It definitely stops the "bouncing" of cars that can occur.
Visually, I find the HO Kadee coupler too small for S. Some say the 802's are too large, but to me they look just about right. The best 1-to1 comparison I can come up with right now is on a pair of cars scratchbuilt by the late Jim Konas. (These have been getting knocked around the basement for 20 years or so, one of these days I'll paint them...)
The car on the left has a #4(I think) while the right car has the 802 I retrofitted.
The 802 is mounted pretty much where the #4 was, I used the flange on the top of the coupler box as a guide for positioning.
I did have to cut back on the frame a little to compensate for the larger coupler box.
Admittedly, the 802 will increase the distance between cars, but not so much that I find it objectionable.
The "Great Coupler Debate" has been going on in S probably since before I got in and I'm used to fiddling around to mount couplers on some cars. Most of the time, it's relatively easy to change or modify the coupler mounting if needed.
Rusty
