# Steam Connection Rods



## Bone1977 (Jan 17, 2014)

Guys,

I had one of my connecting rods pop off during normal operation. The wheels made several revolutions before it derailed. My concern is the wheel position for the rods and getting them positioned properly. This is a 6 wheel setup so 3 right side drive wheels, basically this setup:










The motion appears to match the picture if I run the train very slowly without popping the center pin all the way in the center wheel. I get that these rods are cosmetic, but would like to make sure I'm doing this properly. Are there any sort of things I need to be aware of our guides for this sort of thing? Thanks in advance.


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## Ray Haddad (Feb 19, 2014)

I'd suggest that you manually turn your motor to get the opposite side lined up in a fashion in which you can duplicate the mirror image on the other side. That should do the trick.


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## gunrunnerjohn (Nov 10, 2010)

If you had a single rod come off on one side, you shouldn't have any quartering issue, just bolt it back on.


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## Bone1977 (Jan 17, 2014)

Thanks, that is what I was thinking. I centered all the wheels along the rod connecting all three wheels, lined up the two moving rods, and everything looks good now.


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## gunrunnerjohn (Nov 10, 2010)

I take them off all the time, unless you twist a wheel on the axle, there's no issue in getting them back on.


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## Bone1977 (Jan 17, 2014)

Cool, I'm finally starting to work up the courage to dig into the trains a little bit and start fixing them, changing the couplers, etc. I'm used to 1/8th scale RC so this stuff is like precision surgery.


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## gunrunnerjohn (Nov 10, 2010)

Well, I don't view O-gauge as precision surgery, but if I look at some of the N-scale stuff, that's out of my wheelhouse, too small!


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