Williams passenger car truck upgrade?

As long as the wheelbase is similar and there is way to match the bolster height, any truck should be suitable replacements.  As I recall, Williams 6 wheel trucks are little short like their 4 wheel streamlined trucks.  I'd have to go to storage to see what my set has, but the MTH RK trucks might be a replacement?  I believe, Lionel, MTH scale, and K-Line are too long. 

Another thought depending on the road name might be to find 4 wheel AAR style trucks as many roads used those on the 72' cars.

Random thoughts for a random Tuesday.

The LED's will provide better, even, flicker-free lighting at much less cost than replacing trucks.

I think this is a no-brainer, you'll likely never totally cure the flickering with fooling with incandescent lighting.  Unless the contact is really very poor, these lighting modules will light a strip of LED's without flicker.

I agree John!  I have some in stock for just such an occasion.  

Can you recommend a good male/female connector to the LED strip in case we ever open them up again?

You can use any number of .1" spacing connectors, the JST-EH headers mate up good.  If I'm going to put two connectors on the board, I use dissimilar connectors so there's no possibility of screwing up connecting it up.  Something like the Molex mini-SPOX would be good for the second connector.

Obviously, this is easier if you have the crimp tool for the header contacts.  If not, you can find suitable jumper sets on eBay.

50 SETS JST XH 2.5-2 Pin Battery Connector Plug Female & Male with 120MM Wire, $6.59 shipped, eBay: 231639548157

These are from a US seller, so shipping is quick.  You can get them even cheaper from China, but it take a few weeks.

Volphin posted:

I was asked tonight to look over a club member's Williams passenger cars due to excessive flickering.  He is prone to seizures and disabled so this is pretty important for me to repair.  The cars have the black silhouettes in the windows and two large bayonet bulbs inside.  Each car is outfitted with 6 wheel heavyweight trucks, but each wheel turns independently!  It's like they don't even connect to the axle.  Also the rollers seem to be aluminum and have a tremendous amount of slop in them.  All of this is very odd to me, but I'm a modern era guy.

Question:  Can the trucks be upgraded to a modern Lionel or MTH heavyweight truck?

Or should I just install LEDs with a cap?  Both?  LOL  

I believe you are referring to the early Williams sheet metal trucks with plastic side frames. Yes you can swap those trucks out with more reliable mpc six wheeled die cast trucks found on the 1978 blue comet and other sets from the 1980's to 1990's. Good luck.

To just cure the flicker issue, much cheaper to just upgrade to LED lighting.  Even with the newer trucks, incandescent lighting still flickers.  I've had tons of brand new MTH, K-Line, Lionel, etc. passenger cars on the bench, in the real world virtually all of them flicker some with incandescent bulbs, even with clean wheels, track, and rollers.  They may not flicker nearly as much, but it's cheap and pretty easy to eliminate it altogether.