Bogie Wheel rebuild, beware!!

[Marc van Aalderen]

Hi to All,

As one of my road wheels was starting to loose its rubber and there was a lot of play on the bearings as well I decided to put in a NOS wheel. I have 8 NOS wheels and we removed the end plates and bearings to check and rebuild. All bearings bar two, although absolutely brand new, were destroyed by rust! What a shame! These were angle contact ball bearings made by R&M.

After removing the old wheel I discovered that the NOS wheel that I rebuild previously did not fit in the fork. Dis-assembled the old wheel and found that there were different end plates on either side. On the outboard side there was a setup with a thick plate with a leather grease seal and a felt ring. These were on all the NOS wheels as well but on both sides! On the inboard side there were no seals at all. It looked that the inboard plates were modified un-oficially. So, back to the books!

A plate that I got from Roy showed three wheels, tensioner wheel and two different setup road wheels. One was with the thick end plates with grease seal and felt ring and appeared to be wider in size at the hub. The other was a wheel with thinner end plates and a cork seal with a spacer inside it. FUC-03 shows this setup in illustration 31 on page 152.
The thick end plate with grease seal and felt ring is not mentioned in FUC-03 or in the Manual UC-F1.
I also have the original British Chilwell manual 63/63 and Ilustrated Parts List 63/76. The parts list shows the setup with the thick end plate with grease seal and felt ring, nothing else. The manual on the other hand showed three different road wheel styles. What is called an "old type" with visible cork seals (as illustrated in FUC-03 and UC-F1) and only installed on earlier British types of Carriers. This old type is to be changed for the later setup according to the Chilwell manual. Second type is with "plain bearings", or bushing type. These bushings are to be exchanged with ball bearings, as in the third type, during a vehicle overhaul according to the manual. The second and third type both use the thick end plate with grease seal and felt ring as shown in the Chilwell parts list.
Now the Chilwell manual says to change the old type wheel for a new type but this will not fit in my fork!? The old wheel is about 117 mm wide on the hub and the second and third type are about 123 mm wide. The Chilwell manual says nothing about this. Looking better to the illustration in the parts list showing the Rear Bogie assy I noticed a difference in the bushings TL13787 in the fork ends where the bogie spindle fits. The bushings have no flange on the inside where the wheel sits! The British manual makes no mention of two bushing types, only the flanged type is shown, and the parts list shows the bushings without the flange only. Could this be the trick?
Back in the workshop I dis-assembled a couple of old worn road wheels that still had the spindles, with gas axed fork ends, in them. These wheels TL94 had the thick end plates with grease seal and felt ring. And indeed, the bushings for the spindles had no flanges on the inside!
So knowing what was wrong we removed the complete rear bogie bracket and fork from the Carrier. The pivot pin CTL 108 was rusted solid and did not move before 20 tons under the press was applied. It finally came with a loud bang! With the fork seperated from the bracket I also pressed out the flanged bushings CTL 12852 and measured the flanges. The thickness of the two flanges was excactly the difference between the two hub sizes! Put both bushings in the lathe and turned the flanges off and pressed them back in the fork. Now the rebuild wheel fitted perfectly in the fork!

Further examination of the old damaged road wheel showed that the inside of the cast rim was worn away at an angle, similar to the track fingers, and had burrs on it. This must have been caused by the difference in the two end plate setups. Being thinner on the inside by 5.5 mm moved the road wheel closer to the hull causing the track to wear the rim away. Checking all other five road wheels showed that they ALL were installed incorrectly! The four front and rear wheels were slightly worn on the inside of the rim. The middle wheels are not affected as the track is moved a little bit to the hull by the other wheels. So beware when you are rebuilding your bogies!

I now have a nice job to do in the winter. Removing all other wheels and rebuild the hubs. A lot of the bearings have play so it needed to be done anyway. I think I will install twelve new 6408 bearings and also remove the wheel we now installed and put that on the front as a spare. It is best to run all wheels on new bearings of course. The previous owner did a great job on the armour and other steel work but did nothing to the running gear it appears. Clogged grease nipples, worn bushings, nuts rusted solid and pivot pins badly worn proves this.

I have made scans from all manuals and parts lists to ilustrate my story but can't upload them to MLU. Keep getting a message telling that the upload failed. Pics are no problem. Anybody knows why? Can edit and insert them later if I know how.

Cheers,

[kevin powles]

Marc, My experience with wheels has me using the canadian set up when refurbishing wheels, so much simpler, they use the off the shelf 6408 cage bearing, with a shim each end, end cover both ends, sealing ring and spacer both ends.

What you have with a british wheel is a much better quality in its day brass ball bearing, you will soon know a british wheel when all the bearings fall out on dis-assembly, scrap value on brass is high at the moment. I have found like yourself different styles of sealing on british wheels and a have a mortar ammo box full of them, if you picture what you need from a british wheel i can bring it to Beltring.

kevin.

[Marc van Aalderen]

Michael,
Thank you for posting the images. I just now discovered I had saved the scans as .tif files which MLU will not accept.

My Carrier although Canadian made has only British TL wheels. Probably the previous owner got the wreck without wheels and could only get easier to obtain, at least over here, British wheels. This makes no difference as the cast wheels are both the same. The only thing different is the setup of the seals and end plates.

Kevin,
British wheels will also accept the cheaper 6408 bearings as they are the same size as the angle contact bearings. The previous owner had only British setup wheels and could not fit them in the forks. That must have been the reason he modified the inboard endplates. He probably wasn't to worried about not having any seals in them. As I have no original Canadian end plates but plenty of the British type I will install these and remove the flange on all spindle bushings in the forks. I think the British setup seals better against water and dirt anyway. Thank you for the offer of parts. Should I be short on anything I will get back to you.

Cheers,

[kevin powles]

Marc, Yes no difference between canadian and british cast wheels, these parts will always be here should you need them.

kev.