What is Wheel quartering when rebuilding a loco.I have heard it spoken about lots of times bit not sure if I understand it completely.
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Basically, it is the setting of the wheels of a locomotive to ensure that the crankpins on one side are at 90° to those on the other side of the locomotive.
Gilly
In simplistic terms, each set of drive wheels has to have the wheel crank pins aligned 90 degrees from each other to allow each piston to drive the engine they are mounted in. this has to be precise as they all have to work together with each set of drive wheels.
If they were all in alignment, there would be a "dead-zone" where the pistons could not get the wheel sets to move one way or the other.
The wheels on one side of the Locomotive must be rotated 90° from the ones on the other side. All the drive pins on the wheels of one side will line up together.
Since 90° is one quarter of a rotation, the term quartering was born.
The reason for this is simple, if a set of drivers is at exactly full minimum or maximum extension on the piston, the drive pins are in line with the axles and no amount of piston force will make it rotate. The other side being 90° angle is at maximum deflection from the axle and has maximum leverage at that point, thus one side can drive the train forward enough to get the other side off dead center and allow it to provide force to moving the train.
None of the guys answering above mentioned that, all this applies to steam locomotives of course.
Originally Posted by Hot Water:
None of the guys answering above mentioned that, all this applies to steam locomotives of course.
Except for 3 cylinder steam, of course.
Rusty
Thanks guys for clearing that up. But this doesn't really have to do with our locos, just real ones I'm guessing. As our (TOYS) are geared from behind the wheels so to speak.
Not necessarily true e-unit; a lot of our "toy" steamers also use the side-rods to transfer driving motion to the other wheel-sets. Some exceptions are the "baby" Postwar steamers that have spur-gear trains on one side of each drive wheel, but a lot of our "toy" steamers use the side-rods; such as Lionel #736 Berks, 671/681/682 PA "Turbines" etc. Any steamer with worm gear drive trains are likely using the side-rods to transfer motion, therefor, even our "toy" steamers need to be quartered correctly or they won't run at all or have binding in the linkages.
Thanks a lot D&H. Good to know.
