Kadees on Altas Freight cars

Ron

I Dremel off the 2 round nubs which gives enough clearance for most curves except maybe the loop around the Christmas tree.  The truck is rotated 180 degrees when mounted.  The claw coupler can still be restored by the new owner if I ever sell the car.  Now if I could only remember to put the coupler parts back in the box . . .

Bob

Thanks Bob... Will get out the Dremel tool.  I'm good at destruction.

That's an MTH car.  Atlas refers to them as it "Premire" line.

Jan

Best thing to do is swap to Atlas trucks. They'll lower the car and eliminate all that junk thats in the way. With 2 rail Atlas trucks, you need 1.5mm of spacers for a kadee. If you swap the MTH trucks out for atlas ones, the atlas ones come with a "button" that you insert in the truck mounting hole since the screw for atlas trucks comes up through the bottom. For whatever reason, the truck mount for the high cubes is a larger diameter than a lot of other MTH tooled cars, so the atlas button fits in it kinda sloppily. I 3D printed new buttons out of ABS that can be bonded into the floor of the car without any slop. Since it's then part of the car floor, you can run the atlas truck screws in without worrying about it wiggling around in the hole.

The quickest way to deal with the MTH trucks if you want to use them is to drill the coupler mounting hole progressively larger until its no longer there.  

If you keep the MTH trucks, I think you need a 3mm spacer to lower the coupler away from the floor. With 2 rail Atlas trucks, you need 1.5mm of spacers for a kadee to match the height gauge.

I've converted 4 MTH Premier 50' high cube box cars to 2-rail using Atlas 100T RB trucks and Kadee 745's. No shims or spacers required to get the correct coupler height. The Atlas plastic truck adaptor works fine, no need for any modifications here. Not sure why some people like to make things more difficult than they should be.

As for the MTH trucks, I cut away the extra metal with bolt cutters so they clear the draft gear box. Intermountain wheels work great with MTH trucks for 70T RB applications.