Tuesday, April 23, 2013

This is the Stuff that really ticks me off

I have made it my habit to not make negative comments about other peoples work to date, however this one I can not let pass unremarked.
I'm in the process of assembling 3 SAL B-7 Turtleback roof cars. When I first saw these cars I was pleased with what I saw, particularly the end roof interface. A tricky detail.
But as I worked on these cars a major problem popped up when I checked the coupler height against my Kadee gauge.
As shown in the photo above the car sits too high, a full 0.60". And this is on the kit supplied trucks.
The solution of course is to remove bolster material, until the car sits at the correct height, as well as using trucks that have a lower bolster height, such as Tahoe Model Works trucks.
The entire cast on bolster pad has to be milled off and the bearing surface kept square to insure that the car rides properly.
Now none of this is work that is beyond my abilities, but it should not have to be done in the first place.
In this day and age of 3D printing, advanced CAD programs and many other modern wonders, how can it be so hard to get the car floor at the right height?
I'm appalled and not just a little irritated.
There is no excuse for this.


3 comments:

bobcatt said...

I could not agree more. Having parts that do not fit together, do not remain fitted, or result in the wrong geometry when fitted, is no longer excusable. The software and tools exist to plan and check these things before any raw materials are consumed in a build process.

(unless the original design used different trucks with a lower ride hieght and they suddenly became unavailable - I might let that slide)

Ted DiIorio said...

Looking at the pilot model on their website you can see their mistake. The car clearly looks like it's riding high on the trucks. At $49 + shipping that's big shame.

Jeff said...

I'm not surprised. I was never very impressed with the quality.