Some may have caught my post from last evening showing how my Y-6b decided to throw both original traction tires on its rear engine. What makes this a bigger issue is Lionel engineering decided to put the set of traction tire wheels forward which puts it right behind the crossheads. It is a bone-headed design, especially when the forward engine has the traction tire wheel set in the rear which allows much better access for maintenance. My take on this, the engineer was likely ex-Detroit automotive related who was familiar with designing things so that maintainability was the last thing to be considered.
I know many here would say, put some silicone in the grooves or throw some Bull-frog Snot at them and be done; sorry, but I can't handle those solutions. I had one set of replacements, so I set out today to install them. I'll take you through the scenario with pictures and text to follow.
1) I always remove the boiler top, especially on these heavy articulated engines so that I avoid at all costs damaging the handrail TMCC antennas. I have had this engine apart previously, and you will note I painted the four screws that hold the upper boiler half a industrial shade of green. This saves me having to "re-figure" out which ones to remove.
In the picture just above, disconnect the yellow wire nut (TMCC antenna harness); disconnect the two-tone brown connector (cab light) and disconnect the black & white connector which are the front marker lights. You can now get the upper boiler assembly out of your working room.
2) As others have found out, the side rod screw that holds the main rod on each front driver does not come completely into the clear to allow the Lionel supplied nut-driver ( or any other nut driver for that matter) to be used. To get that needed clearance, we need to be able to drop the front drive wheel-set slightly to get the side rod screw into the open. This can be done by slowly and judiciously removing the brake shoe hanger/main drive wheel bushing retainer assembly. Make sure the chassis is inverted and steady before doing this work. Once you have the retainer removed, you have one remaining item, notably, the gearbox lower cover, to remove. Once this is out of the way, the complete drive wheel set can be slowly raised and removed completely from the chassis. The two bearing blocks come out with the wheel set revealing two small tension springs underneath. Work slowly and the springs will stay in place. (While I removed the trailing truck assembly on my attempt, it does not need to be removed to get the bearing retainer assembly off.)
3) Now that the driver assembly is free and clear, it's about a 30 second job on each wheel to install replacement tires. You are now ready to reverse the dis-assembly process and re-install components in the reverse order of removal. Sharp eye-d readers may spy something I missed after the wheel set re-installation - that being the bearing/bushing tabs on the lower side are not parallel with the chassis, but perpendicular. That would come back to bite me in the butt once I noticed a slight binding while running. Once I checked the photo, I knew this one bushing was the cause as the bushing holes for the axel are slightly off-set. This results in a "tight" condition in a portion of the side rod travel since that rod screw is traveling an elliptical arc. be sure yours are as they look below, or you too, can do another complete dis-assembly to correct it. The engine now runs like silk again and keeping the N&W hauling black diamonds on time again.
