Diaphragms on Lionel Heavy Weight Passenger Cars

Normally one of the accordian links fits inside the doorway. You may actually have them mounted backwards. The peaked end faces out. That would effectively shorten them by one section, the same as cutting one section off.

Pete

Put the cars on the 072 curve without the diaphrgms and measure the inside dimension then measure the diaphrgms and set it up for 1/16 th inch in the clear.

Mikey

I still don't understand why they are not producing a thin black diaphragm, (like in a flexible dryer vent) with magnets to connect to the next car...

IMO diaphragms also need a slightly rounded striker plate so they don't snag on each other when going round-the-bend.

Rock, It appears you have already cutoff the end the fits inside the doorway and holds in place without glue. This what the diaphram looks like.

Here is what it looks like mounted to the car. Lionel car on the left.

I can appreciated wanting to close up the gap on these cars but the better way is to close the coupling distance.

Pete

Norton posted:

Rock, It appears you have already cutoff the end the fits inside the doorway and holds in place without glue. This what the diaphram looks like.

Here is what it looks like mounted to the car. Lionel car on the left.

I can appreciated wanting to close up the gap on these cars but the better way is to close the coupling distance.

Pete

Pete you sure are right.I had an extra one so I removed one that I glued on and re installed it as you described.It is perfect and no messy glue needed.Good thing I used hot melt glue,it came right off with no messy residue.I am totally fine with the gap shown in your pic.I ordered new ones from Lionel.I am going to re do all of them.It was only a $30.00 blunder.Not the end of the world.I sure appreciate the trouble you have gone through to help me.Thanks much,Nick

@rogerpete posted:

I still don't understand why they are not producing a thin black diaphragm, (like in a flexible dryer vent) with magnets to connect to the next car...

Sadly no manufacturer has taken your idea and produced it.

In most scale designs. the materials we use plastic, resin, wood, metal are over designed, meaning far above "scale-strength" for the applications.

However, sometimes, the scale designs are such that the materials just don't work, like thin, less than a 1/64"( 0.015") sheet metal replication designs. I cannot 3D print nor laser cut designs that thin.  Also, in that category, are diaphragms.

Paper, thin cloth, or rubber material diaphragms are way too inflexible to be used when connected together between the passenger cars because they are too strong in comparison to the weight and resistive torque of the two-passenger car interconnected.  In an actual application, the weight and strength of the diaphragm is way way less than the cars.

I tried to design a resin diaphragm. Below in gray is a flexible resin printed diaphragm.  The little red dots are magnets. the orange is a solid resin frame to be connected to the vestibule opening in the car end.

Several prints later .  . well no success.  I'll leave the design to someone more experienced or until better materials can be found.

This has come before in another topic. It was found that the bottom of the diaphragms were binding on the tops of the couplers. If that is the case here, the solution is to trim off a small amount of the bottom of the diaphragms, or no diaphragms at all.

I have to get back to this... TPU (Shore 85A) Diaphragms.  I still have to add the Strikers and other hardware... the GAP is closing.  Next time they will be printed using Black TPU.