A Lionel turbine wheel problem - 671, 2020 made in 1947

Forget repairing them. Replace them.

Here is a 671/2020 chassis with good wheels.

You will need a wheel puller to remove the wheels, and a press to reinstall them square, and properly quartered.

Larry

If the other chassis is good, as well as the drive wheels, don't bother pulling them... swap chassis.   I have fix a couple PW engines this way when the wheels are chipped, warped, etc.

Jesse   TCA

I have repaired several of these locomotives and have bought junk ones just to obtain wheels. Note that you have to remove the adjacent wheel  before you can remove a flanged wheel so each flanged wheel replacement requires that 2 wheels be pulled and repressed. The flanged wheels on the 1948 model also had steel rims. The blind drivers did not.

Hate to be "that guy" but shouldn't this be in the postwar forum?

What postwar forum ?  I see one about Hirail, etc., but it's all about modern stuff - MTH, electronic controls and other junk.  My era is 1920 to 1950's.  Does having die casting exclude Lionel's best ever locomotives.  What about a 675 with the 2440/41 passenger cars ?  Is that not tinplate ?

Appreciate the comments from Larry, Jesse and Dave.

I like that chassis that Larry showed, but bidding on an item that has an opening bid cost of $51(w/shipping) to replace parts on a frame that may sell for $30 

I did see a junky looking 671 on eBay for about $100.  If I made an offer of $80 for that and got it,  after pulling the two wheels, I could probably make money on the other parts.  But that's a lot of work  and I have plenty of such projects sitting around my workshops. 

When you making a business of buying the stuff that's been sitting in attics and basements for 60 years, you get the look like junk stuff along with the gems.  Part of the fun for me is realizing the value of every part of that "junk".  In five years of doing this with maybe a thousand cars, locos, switches and accessories and their parts, I've had maybe a dozen items that ended up in the trash.

As for wheel pulling, a few months ago a friend showed me how, I got Grossman's Marx wheel puller and thta's becoming part of my routine.  As part of the same batch as the 1947 2020 I have a 681.  One of the blind drives had the head of the screw break off so I had to pull that wheel and buy a replacement.  Blind drivers are plentiful on eBay but flanged wheels aare scarce.

As for Dave's comment about 1948 wheels, the problem is that nickel steel rims were used only in 46, 47.  In '48, they were blackened steel rims.  (See Greenberg 1945-69, volume 1, p. 77, locos C and D).

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By now I suppose I've written more than anyone wants to read on this subject.  I think I'll put this chassis on the shelf to wait for the time when I find a cheap early 2020 or 671 junker with at least tow good flanged wheels.

mlaughlinnyc posted:

What postwar forum ?  I see one about Hirail, etc., but it's all about modern stuff - MTH, electronic controls and other junk.  My era is 1920 to 1950's.  Does having die casting exclude Lionel's best ever locomotives.  What about a 675 with the 2440/41 passenger cars ?  Is that not tinplate ?

After writing that long response and thinking about Brain 's question, I could have written almost the same about a 152 that I'm restoring or a 248 that I sold as three part groups or a 262 that's in nine eBay listings, about half sold so far.

So die cast or real tin, same story.

I generally consider the postwar period to fall into the "Hi-Rail, O27 and Traditional 3-Rail O Gauge" forum, but that forum is far from exclusive to postwar. TinPlate would fall there as well, except there is this more granular "Tinplate Trains" forum defined. I always thought it would be nice to have a traditional postwar forum, but the lines could get blurry - what about the MPC clones of postwar? CC Postwar Reproductions? Pre-war carry over? Prewar items that are NOT tinplate?

Postwar Lionel is really a big inclusive tent, especially the first few years what with that sheet metal Pennsy caboose and automobile boxcar, plus those nice blue, green and brown tinplate coaches, plus the 97 coal loader, so I see NO problem with a 671 or a 2020 being discussed here. 

mlaughlinnyc posted:

What postwar forum ?  I see one about Hirail, etc., but it's all about modern stuff - MTH, electronic controls and other junk.  My era is 1920 to 1950's.  Does having die casting exclude Lionel's best ever locomotives.  What about a 675 with the 2440/41 passenger cars ?  Is that not tinplate ?

The "Hi-Rail, O27 and Traditional 3-Rail O Gauge"  Forum would be the proper one, hence the 027 & traditional 3-rail connotations. People do talk about the 2440 cars here sometimes and other carryover items, but they are still tinplate. Obviously some items made prewar aren't all tinplate either, but usually come with tinplate parts/cars etc... So from what I've seen, people use tinplate & prewar synonymously to define an era, and anything postwar that's tinplate is still just tinplate. But the 2020 isn't prewar or tinplate, so it seemed odd to post it here; I'm not saying you can't do it, but you may not get as effective of answers as you would if you posted it in the more proper forum. 

I think, as stated above, it would be nice to have a Postwar inclusive forum, but then you might have guys posting modern stuff saying it was made after WWII

This has been a most interesting conversation.  Although I completely disagree with Brian, I have to begin by thanking him for raising the question.

If we are going to exclude die cast locomotives from a tinplate forum, where do we begin.  In the last half hour, I've been browsing my Lionel catalogs from 1936 to 1949, the overlap period.  I note that the first die cast locomotive was in 1936 and the last tinplate car was in 1949.Looking at 1938, I count 34 O gauge train sets ( not including streamlined sets with power cars).  If we rule out discussion of die cast locomotives, we can talk about the power for only the eight of those trains, 259, 263 and 265.  Left out are the 1688, 1664, 1666, 224, 225, 238, 226, 250, 700 and 763.

The last Lionel real tinplate was in 1949, when there were die cast locomotives pulling tinplate trains, in both O (675) and O-27 (2026) sets.

But I prefer to think functionally about the distinction between tinplate and modern.  I'll stop here, and write more in a few minutes.

<>One of the blind drives had the head of the screw break off so I had to pull that wheel and buy a replacement.<>

There is an easier way that often works. Take a small file and scratch a groove into the top of the broken off screw. Then it can often be removed with a jeweler's screw driver. You might even chuck the screw driver into a drill and run it in reverse. Much simpler than pulling the wheel, reinstalling and re-quartering a wheel.

I said something about thinking functionally.  Not sure that's the right word, but it will have to do.

For me, what distinguishes Lionel, and American Flyer and Marx, from the modern stuff is their mechanics.  I like things that can be fixed with pliers, screwdriver and soldering iron.  Fixing one Lionel or another is the same thing, never mind whether there's tin or die casting on top.  One thing I won't abidein toy trains is anything with electronics, whether it be LED or [rinted circuits or computers.  Same with switches and transformers.  What material is used doesn't matter.

I also believe that collecting is about finding old things and preserving them.  I have no use for phony collectors items like an MTH Blue Comet or new standard guage imitations of 20's Lionel.  I've no interest in stuff made after the early 50's.

Put that altogether and the Hirail, etc group is a foreign land for me.  For those of us who love the real old Lionel trains, the tinplate forum is home.

Reading again Brian's post from five hours ago.  One thing I like about this forum is the technical advice.  The discussion we had on that could just as well have been about wheels on a 10E or a 259 or a 1666.

It is ALL GOOD!  ☺