Yesterday I was able to buy a few Menards cars from my local store. One of them was the new Saskatchewan hopper.
It's a nicely made car. However when I tried running it on my Lionel O36 Fastrack I found it had trouble smoothly running around the curves. At times some adjoining cars would cause the Menards car to derail. So I looked a little closer at the car.
I found that the trucks couldn't swing fully due to two things:
1. The stirrup steps interfered with the wheels and
2. the body rubbed on the top of the truck sideframes.
To fix the problem I first took a single edge razor blade and carefully removed a tiny sliver of plastic hanging down below the bottom edge of the body at both sides and ends of the car. That fixed the side frame rubbing.
Secondly I chose to file off a bit of the black plastic on the back edge of all 4 stirrups. The filing was not noticeable due to the solid black color of the plastic. Be careful not to scratch either the body paint or trucks when filing.
The truck is removable from the body with just one screw. But you can't easily separate the truck into it's parts. I thought about adding a spacing washer to lower the sideframes and wheels but it looked like dis-assembly would be a mistake. So I chose the razor blade/file fix.
It's no biggie as I don't mind a bit of adjustment on a $20.00 car.
After the work being done the car smoothly negotiated the O36 curves without any trouble and have not derailed again.
This is the only Menards hopper I own so I can't say if other versions have this issue.
Mark
