Bogie Wheel Re-rubbering

[ron]

Wheels and tracks, Mmmm that could make a good title for a magazine, A few years ago I also looked into re casting carrier track and got some very good quotes, not for my self as I had many sets of N O S track, but all I got was requests from tyre kickers so I gave it up as a bad joke, its the one major item that will spoil all the work that we put into our hobby , I guess one day someone will give it another go, the best way I think is to get a good group of freinds together to share the cost of the moulds, and sell the track at a reonable price,that all can afford not rip off prices, that was my idea, but it was early in the piece, and not much interest in those days, but as it was then and is now you have to think of the future, lesson over

[chris vickery]

Hi Ron
The problem with the hobby is that there are so many levels of restoration going on that only the purists among us are ever willing to shell out real money for quality.
This is especially complicated in a relatively small niche market which spans the globe.
As far as carrier wheel re-rubber, it would be fantastic I'm sure for some fellows here in Canada, the UK and Australia. Unfortunately, the cost and feasibility of sourcing and having it all done in one place makes it unreasonable and it needs to be sourced locally.
I would think that rather than re-inventing the wheel (pun intended), would it not make sense for guys in the UK or Canada to get in touch with the manufacturer in Australia or the customer and perhaps obtain the specifications for the molds that were used and the techniques? It is likely that the developement of the molds make up the bulk of the manufacturing costs and with todays technology and the advent of cad/cam etc and data files it would be as simple as having blueprints forwarded to the appropriate vendor to reproduce suitable molds for use locally..
For this perhaps a cost sharing or licensing fee would be appropriate to cover the original development price...
The same would be applicable to development of track castings as well. I am sure a firm in China would be happy to oblige!

[Andrew Rowe]

I have looked into doing moulds here in New Zealand. The cost was NZ$5750 for the mould for local pattern wheels with an insert in the mould for another NZ$1450 so that English / Canadian could be cast from the same mould.
Original English wheels seem to test out at 75 Shore hardness on average.
I was looking at using Black coloured polyurethane elastomer with mechanical properties as good, if not exceeding the original rubber. This project still sits in the melting pot! There is also on going research into the casting of tracks in China, but I do not see this happening any time soon.

[Dale Jordan]

Hi Andrew how would it go sending a couple of pallets of wheel by ship to OZ. The freight may not be that bad . The wheels are 32 Kg Each. Dale

[RichardT10829]

I have gone down the "china" route for tracks before, but you are still looking at 10K plus to get some made up.

There is a chap in Germany making ww2 track but the tooling costs alone were 15k. And you got a penalty for low numbers of links (ie anything less than 1000 links)

[Dave Schindel]

I used 2 part polyurethane to do 2 wheels and they are working out very well.After being run for several miles it's hard to tell the original rubber from the poly.the hard part was finding a supplier for the poly. I made a mould using fiberglass and a good wheel,then cleaned up a rim, installed the mould, and poured the poly.

[Andrew Rowe]

Yes Dale, I recon that is the best option for guys over here, if wheels need to get done , is to strip them here of old rubber and send them to Aus, or maybe cheaper to buy old rims in Aus, so there is only a one way trip.