John Rowlen posted:Hey Eric, I guess you should at least give a brief description of what we need to do to fix this. It would be appreciated. Step 1, Step 2, You know.
I can always bend the coupler back, and bend the coupler back, and bend the coupler back.
Did I mention that I could bend the coupler back? Metal fatigue will surely come along with my mental fatigue.
Great series of videos. Keep up the great work.
Sincerely, John Rowlen
I'm not sure if it applies to everyone's situation, but with mine the problem is not that coupler itself is bending or that the post is bending. The problem is that the metal plate/tab (the piece with the spring on it) that the coupler attached too is bending a bit under strain. What I did on one of my cars was to shim the post up with a very thin piece of sheet styrene placed under area where the post rides. This pushes the post and coupler down a bit, leveling it off, while also providing less room for the post to return to the off-kilter position that the strain of pulling the train caused in the first place.
I haven't filmed a video on how to do it yet because I just did the fix a few weeks ago and so I wanted to run the cars for a while to test the long-term viability of the fix. I was planning to shoot a video of the fix if it still holds up after a few months of run-time. So, if you do this fix, just keep in mind that it hasn't been tested long term. But then again, the reason for this problem in the first place is because Lionel probably didn't do extensive long term tests of the current design to see how it would hold up under stress.
Thanks,
Eric Siegel
