First let me say "I hate traction tires". I can understand the people who repair trains for $$ hate glued tires and I can't say that I blame them. It does complicate replacement quite a bit. Cleaning out the groove is such a PITA and takes time. However at the very least gluing the tires on doubles their life. I have used contact cement as well as superglue (CA) and let me say CA is far easier to clean out of the groove. I use an X-Acto chisel blade and grind down it's width till it is about .75 the width of the groove. Given the loco is upside down in a cradle and has wires attached to run it. I hold the blade from 5-10 degrees above tangent with the wheel turning into the blades edge. Depending on the situation I might work the blade under what is left of the tire with the wheel stationary till all the rubber is off, rotating the wheel as necessary. Then I power up the loco and let the remaining CA chips come to the blade with the wheels rotating. The chips of CA fly off in just a few revolutions. Next I install the new tire and have it well settled into the groove. Then I take a very small jewelers screwdriver blade and lift the outside edge of the tire. Then I put a drop of water thin CA on another jewelers screwdriver blade about 1/8" wide and touch the tip of the blade to the bottom side of the tire then slide the small blade holding the tire up away from the glue without removing it from holding the tire up. Add another drop of CA and move the lifting screwdriver again till you have worked your way around the entire groove. Now, let me justify all this madness. Back around 92 I purchased an 18018 Southern 4501 Mikado 2-8-2 it was brand new I set up my Christmas tree with a circle of O-72 track and my ceramic village. I put the Mikado on the track with four matching Williams Southern 18" passenger cars. I started my train and set the speed about 30 SMPH intending to just let it run at that speed while we did what ever we were doing. In about thirty minutes I noticed that the loco had slowed down and was lurching along. So I got down on the floor to examine the situation and noticed that a tire was off it's driver and binding in the side rod. I took the loco to a convenient place to sit down and worked the tire back into it's groove and put the loco back on the track. This time the tire came off in less than five minutes. I turned the train off and the next morning I put it on my bench and glued all the tires on with contact cement and let the loco sit a few days to make sure the glue had completely cured. It was well over ten years before I had to put new tires on that loco and it was run a lot. j
|
|
