Weaver smoothside interiors?

I just finished upgrading a set with warm white strip LED's and Gunrunnerjohn's lighting circuits. I installed varnished birch plywood floors to cover the wires and reflect the light ( I removed the bent tabs that held the three light fixtures).

Very even light drawing about one tenth of an amp per car.

I also inserted some removeable folded card stock in the door slides to keep the baggage doors shut.

I really like the results. 

Joe - the trucks under the Weaver streamlined aluminum body passenger cars have shorter than prototype wheelbases, and are mounted closer to the car ends than prototype practice.  I believe Weaver mirrored Lionel's 18" passenger car truck wheelbase and mounting location when the Weaver product line was developed years ago..  While those compromises look ok on shorter passenger cars, IMO they look odd under scale length 85' cars due to the extremely long side skirt between the trucks.   I sold my Weaver 21' cars in favor of GGD ones. 

Ed Rappe

Joe - the trucks under the Weaver streamlined aluminum body passenger cars have shorter than prototype wheelbases, and are mounted closer to the car ends than prototype practice.  I believe Weaver mirrored Lionel's 18" passenger car truck wheelbase and mounting location when the Weaver product line was developed years ago..  While those compromises look ok on shorter passenger cars, IMO they look odd under scale length 85' cars due to the extremely long side skirt between the trucks.   Also notice that the bottom of the baggage doors ride high on the body. We all accept some compromises in our models, my choice was to sell my Weaver PRR  21' cars in favor of GGD ones.  I mention the shortcomings as just something you may want to consider before investing time and money in upgrades.

Joe....great question!  I called Joe at Weaver around 3 or 4 months before he made the announcement that they were closing.  I asked him the same question...."you guys have interiors for the streamlined cars?".  He said that they did not but they did have the interiors that went into the "American Flyer" cars.  I discussed with him his opinion on how well one could modify what was essentially a floor with molded seats.  We concluded that it may take some work but also may be worth a try....so....he sent one to me for FREE..!!  Once received I got to work and found that there was simply too much modification to make it worth the effort.  Even after taking out the light bulbs and bending the light bulb holders down, the floor and seats would not fit so I cut it in half down the isle way and then had to cut a little off because the floor was too wide.  I was able to install both pieces but the seats were sitting to high on the metal floor and there was nothing one could do to fix that without fabricating an entire new floor...basically tossing out the current metal floor and making a new one that could be mounted lower.  Even after looking at that, the new floor's height was limited by the truck cutouts.  Another problem is that Weaver glued the window inserts into place instead of sliding them into grooves like one sees in some production.  It was nearly impossible to peal the windows inserts out of the car and in fact I basically had to cut them out...no easy task but the goal was to replace the tinted inserts with clear plastic...  Bottom line, for me it was a difficult conversion which I finally gave up on.  I think replacing the light bulbs with dim LEDs may be next and then re-think the interiors....

Alan

Wow, thank you for the helpful answers. I may step back and consider then. The third car in the picture is actually just one of ten, that are the GGD alum. car's 1938 sets. I passed on the 1948 set as I was out of cash.

Maybe I'll just shove these in the background. I like the finish and even the end gasket things. I had a set of K-line horizon trucks on the bench and that's when I noticed just how short the Weaver trucks are. Next to the GGD, they are tiny and yet taller? Odd mounting at offset to one end like Ed mentions.

I have a set of Weaver N&W cars and they have no interiors and as Ed Rappe said, the trucks are short.

I replaced the trucks with K-Line/Lionel trucks, but had to make mounting pads for each truck as the centering holes are not the same between the original trucks and the K-Line trucks.

I also have 2 Weaver Flyer cars.  They come with interiors and the seats are kinda glued to the floor and can be removed easily.

Interiors will cost $$$ to do a car right, plus a lot of effort, but hey what are you going to do???

I installed a string of cool white LEDs I got from AdaFruit in one of my OK Engines aluminum cars and they work fine (battery powered with a pushbutton hidden away), but they appear bluish in color.  I think it's because I have the seats painted blue and the interior walls are aluminum, making the light reflect off the blue seats.

Oh, I have not put any interiors in my N&W cars yet, except for some 2" wide cloth sports tape I put down on the floor and painted to represent carpet.  Looks pretty cool!