K-Line 6-Wheel Passenger Car Trucks?

Do you have pictures?  I happen to have a bunch of the K-Line passenger cars with the 6 wheel trucks, and I took mine apart with no problems. 

Yours must be a different design, my side frames are screwed on. 

As it turns out, mine needed wheel replacements as well, and I just replaced them with generic fast-angle wheelsets, they worked fine.

I'd see if you can coax those rivets out of the side frames without drilling, the bolsters are steel, and the side-frames are die-cast, correct?  You're liable to have a larger mess after drilling if so.

At $30 a pair, you might as well shop for new passenger cars if you can't get these apart!

John,

I'll post photos later, if I'm up to it.  I have to go to the urologist and get a stent removed (had a kidney stone lasered out on the 5th).

YIKES!  TMI!

I hate to say this, but bite the bullet and buy the new replacement trucks for the K-Line heavyweights, whoever makes them, be it Lionel or MTH.

I had a set of K-Line heavyweight passenger cars that the very same thing happened to, only three to four years ago.

Lee Fritz

Here's what they look like:

I was thinking maybe I could file the pinged surface off, remove the bolster, and drill/tap the sideframes, but I'd still have to buy some wheelsets and haven't located any yet.

This will have to wait, I feel like I've been gutted after going to the doctor so I'm going to go lay down now  I'm glad I only get kidney stones every 7 years (I can almost set my watch to it).

Those are totally different from my trucks.  Mine are sprung trucks and have screws to remove the side frames.

With that construction, I think your idea makes sense, just grind the top part off and open them up.  I'd personally use the dremel and a grinding wheel.

For the wheelsets, I posted in the Wanted-to-Buy forum here and got a couple of offers, one which I accepted.   I think there are folks around with extra weelsets.

As far as setting your watch, if that's the effect, I'd get rid of the watch!

I tried to lay down but kept thinking about these trucks, so I decided to give it a go.

Here's what one of the wheelsets looked like:

The top photo shows the wheel had a crack in it and the bottom photo shows parts of the flange missing, just fell apart!

I found some freight car trucks that were plastic with metal wheels so I took the wheels to use on the passenger trucks.

I Dremeled off the pinged metal tabs and removed the sideframes.  I finished removing the tabs down to the flat surface.  I also drilled clearance holes in the bolster for #2 screws.

I drilled/tapped 4 holes for #2 screws, 2 in each sideframe, cleaned everything up and re-assembled the trucks and "new" wheels.  I had to cut down some #2 screws from 1" to 1/4" in length and they worked fine.

Out of the 3 cars I have with K-Line trucks on them I found 3 trucks that need fixing.  I had enough "new" wheels to fix 2 trucks and plan on reusing some of the good, old wheels to fix the other truck.  2 trucks had different types of wheels on them.  The ones that were broken seemed to be made of 2 parts, the trucks that had different wheels didn't have the part that made up the back side of the wheel.

Good thing is now if I have any problems with the wheels I can simply unscrew them and install new wheels!

Oh, it took about 1 hour to do both trucks for the one car.

Yep, mine were worse than those, but that's what happens to them.  Looks like it worked out just fine, and you saved $30.

If you need a couple of wheelsets, drop me an email.

Will do John.  I'll know more after I do the next car.