Replacing wheels

nail set, hammer and towels. This set up came directly from Jeff Kane @ ttender.com.

put 4-5 towels in your lap as padding, place locomotive in padded towels, place

nail set on end of axle of wheel you wish to remove, hold nail set firmly and

wack it with hammer. works everytime. ive used this for even stubborn wheels

that don't want to release from axles. have fun

Popi posted:

nail set, hammer and towels. This set up came directly from Jeff Kane @ ttender.com.

put 4-5 towels in your lap as padding, place locomotive in padded towels, place

nail set on end of axle of wheel you wish to remove, hold nail set firmly and

wack it with hammer. works everytime. ive used this for even stubborn wheels

that don't want to release from axles. have fun

I have to try this, sounds good.
I have been using the two screw driver method, which works but can put undo stress on a wheel if to much pressure on one side

Thanks: Popi

Good advice from POPI. Sometimes std. gauge wheels will just twist off.  Usually std. you can push wheel on enough to use a vice carefully to set gauge, also they can be tweaked afterwards to get any wobble out. 0 gauge also, but more difficult. When replacing with new wheels/and or axles, first check fit. 

Chris

There may be alternate ways of removing and reinstalling drive wheels that may work well, but the best policy in any situation is to use the proper tool for the job. In this case, a press with the proper tools and wheel cups is needed. I know they are not cheap, but possibly a local train hobby shop may have one, and will press the wheels on for you.

Larry

TrainLarry posted:

There may be alternate ways of removing and reinstalling drive wheels that may work well, but the best policy in any situation is to use the proper tool for the job. In this case, a press with the proper tools and wheel cups is needed. I know they are not cheap, but possibly a local train hobby shop may have one, and will press the wheels on for you.

 

Larry

Sure! they will press them on for you...…….at $75.00 an hour!!! chaching!!! That's why years ago I started working on my own trains

because I could not afford to pay for ALL the repairs I needed because I run at 5 train shows this time of year and I need to keep 

my locomotives running and cant afford someone else to do it.

To remove, I do as POPI states but I have an old bench vise that I can rest the motor on top of with the wheel in between the jaws and punch the axle out.  Then I can remove the axle with the second wheel, close down the jaws of the vice and set the second wheel on top of it with the axle in-between the jaws and punch it out.  Note that the nail set will leave indentations on the ends of the axle.  I then use the vice to squeeze the new wheels onto the axles, very slowly and one at a time, being careful to ensure they go on straight and frequently testing to ensure they end up in gauge.

I think it depends on how much wheel work you are going to do.  Getting the old wheel off without damaging anything is the big issue for me. Different methods work for different locos. Most pullers pull use the rim of the wheel to pull against.  Works for post war steel wheels, but on the older wheels it can break the wheel.  I like using a pickle fork, similar to the two screw driver method, but it can damage the bearing and it is trying to push the wheel off at an angle. Knock out punches are made for arbor presses, but there has to be a rigid frame to push against and additional tooling may be required to support the frame. 

For putting wheels on, nothing beats an arbor press with the proper wheel cups. Works well and is quick and produces consistent results. 

There is a lot of discussion on this subject on the site already. If you have some time, use the search feature and read some of the older discussion. 

   I'd go for a good hardened puller. You might need more than one, you never know.  Cups a bonus, a necessity at times, but being careful has always been enough for me.   The arbor is the dream, lol.

   A vice is ok if its not too sloppy. A machine vice is nicer. Hardwood for temp. "cups"&/or protection. 

  I've cracked flanges prying. I've cracked wheel bosses and bearings prying and driving.  I've cracked flanges with a nice gear puller too.

....a wheel puller would be a nice tool to start with

Perhaps a friend or fellow forum member who owns an arbor press and lives nearby, would help you out?

I had to re-read the initial post and several of the follow on comments here to grasp what had been posted. Let me say from the start, had the train tender been sitting at one of our benches with a customers locomotive or in the case of prewar, the motor assembly, and he whipped out his 5 towels, his punch or nail set and a hammer and started to drive out axles, he would be sitting outside before he knew what happened. I've seen this kind of work all too often when first time customers bring in their trains for repair and it sickens me. There are too many good inexpensive tools available to have to do this. David Johnston mentioned that the Lionel wheel puller sometimes chips flanges, presumably on tight wheels. Lionel published a fix for this and it's simple. Two strips of 1/16" thick by 3/18" wide tool steel strip. Place a strip between each jaw foot and the back of the wheel. This spreads the force across the rear of the wheel rather than concentrating it at the jaw foot. Someone mentioned removing and replacing wheels at $75 an hour - I wish we could charge that, but it doesn't happen. Our shop rate is $55 an hour, but it doesn't take anywhere near an hour to change a set of tinplate O gauge or standard gauge wheels. The meatball surgery mentioned here makes it difficult for everyone, especially those entering the hobby. They are quickly disenchanted when their 400E wobbles down the track like the Toonerville Trolley. As an example of this kind of haphazard repair, I just finished a motor on a 400E that had just been purchase by the customer as running like new. Well, it ran like new for about 5 minutes and suddenly locked up tight with the wheels out of synch. Once I got the motor completely apart, which included splitting the motor halves, I found that it had an early 2-61 armature and pinion, with a shaft diameter of .112. The shop that worked on it previously didn't split the motor, they just changed the intermediate gears and gear plate. Well, the intermediate gears were .010 undersize in diameter and the gear plate was for a later motor having an armature with a .125 shaft diameter. Whatever was left of the original pinion gear on the amature was so badly chewed up that it was beyond use. Many years ago while serving my apprenticeship as a tool maker, the shop forman took me aside and told me that if I remember nothing else, remember that you can do things two ways, right or wrong. If you do it right, you do it once. If you do it wrong, you do it twice.

Dennis