Piko 38100 and 38101 0-6-0 tank locos - a good buy or not?

got it, even though it's really the only question you asked in your first post, and on post #12 you were going to get your glassfibre pen out to clean the wheels... I was just curious if you had done it, and what were the results. It just generated so much interest, but not for the OP ha ha!
 
Greg Elmassian said:
got it, even though it's really the only question you asked in your first post, and on post #12 you were going to get your glassfibre pen out to clean the wheels... I was just curious if you had done it, and what were the results. It just generated so much interest, but not for the OP ha ha!
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Well, I got my glass fibre pens out, and neither had any glass fibre in them. Then, I couldn't find any spare refills so I ordered some and am waiting for them to arrive in the next couple of days. So it's not high on my lost of priorities until those arrive, then it will be again.
 
Sorry, I was not meaning to bug you. So far, cleaning the "shipping gunk" has worked well for me on these wheels. I agree, the fiberglas scratch brush is a staple tool, I have learned the hard way to keep refills!

Best of luck with it, normally these wheels will "polish up" fairly well, when cleaned they will look almost like solid metal, but not quite... keep scraping them until shiny.

Greg
 
Greg Elmassian said:
Sorry, I was not meaning to bug you. So far, cleaning the "shipping gunk" has worked well for me on these wheels. I agree, the fiberglas scratch brush is a staple tool, I have learned the hard way to keep refills!

Best of luck with it, normally these wheels will "polish up" fairly well, when cleaned they will look almost like solid metal, but not quite... keep scraping them until shiny.

Greg
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You didn't bug me, Greg, so no need for apologies. What did bug was that I have two glass fibre pens and some refills but could only find the "empty" pens. However, see update post below.
 
Well, the glass fibre pen refills arrived a couple of days ago and I had a chance to do a bit of cleaning with them today. The coating on the wheels, whatever it is, comes off quite easily and there is a nice bright and shiny surface underneath. I haven't yet cleaned round the complete radius of the driven wheels on the New York Central loco, which is the one I'm working on first of all, but slow speed running seems much improved and stalling on points ties in with the uncleaned part of the wheel being contact with the rail.
 
Great, that parallels my experience too. When I got my new Aristo SD45 and my new Dash 9, they ran like crap out of the box and I wondered what the heck, since they have 12 wheel pickup.

Since I had experienced the sintered wheels from AML, I quickly removed that coating, which all I can surmise is to protect until sold.

I reckon they got pretty shiny, although on magnification you should be able to see that it is not "solid" steel.

Here is a picture of a late model Aristo SD45 with sintered wheels.

AristoMRL_SD45locoRearMotorBlockHadColdSolderJointOnOneMotorLeadAtForkConnection_IMG_6237.jpg


Without aggressive cleaning, this is after 2 hours of run in time:

AristoMRL_SD45locoSinteredIronWheelTreadSurfaceAfterApprox2hourRunInTime_IMG_6778.jpg


Clearly mechanical abrasion is necessary.

Greg
 
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