Upgrading a Mantua 0-4-0

A picture of the engine sent to me.

Here's the reason this engine is such a poor performer at low speed and even at higher speeds, even with a can
motor. The engine only has two wheels picking up on one side. The tender has four. The contact between wheels
on the tender bolsters is suspect to poor electrical contact as is the wheels in the truck frames. The object of this
project will be to show how to make this engine run better by improving the electrical pick-up. I hope to also
pass along small tips and tricks that may help you if you ever decide to try something like this on any engine, be
it steam, diesel or electric. There is more to tell but suffice it to say that this should start this modification. A
couple of notes. I will be using a lathe and mill to make the modifications needed. I realize not everybody has
this kind of tooling in their railroad shop, but being that my second hobby is home shop machining I have an
advantage over the other modelers out there.

I tackled the tender first. A set of all metal wheels, including the truck frame are to replace the trucks on the tender.
The new trucks are believed to be from Tichy. The ones that are on there now are a combination of metal and plastic.

In order to work on the chassis, I needed to remove the plastic shell from the metal chassis. There is a tab by the
draw bar screw that needs to get pried out in order to remove the shell. I don't like this set up. Since you'll want to
remove the shell to get at the decoder that will be installed later. I feel this is an area that would eventually break. I'm going to modify that also. That'll be the last step.

Once I got the shell removed, I tried out the new trucks. It was mentioned that the coupler was a bit low.
Not too bad, but I'm going to make it better.

There's a lot of info in this picture. The new trucks cannot be screwed on with the screws that hold the Mantua
trucks on. They have a built-in washer at the top that is too large in diameter to fit inside the newer trucks
mounting hole. One solution that might work would be to file down the head of the screw, tedious at best.
Using my lathe, I made a set of bushing's with a 2-56 thread. They fit into the truck mounting hole. When the
screw is tightened down it bottoms out on the bushing allowing a small amount of play for the truck to swivel
and follow uneven track. Here's a tip. When I buy screws for projects like this, I always get the longest length
that is they have in the size I need. Reason, I can always shorten a screw to the size I need instead of trying to
find one of the right length. That's what the small piece of brass is for. I drilled and tapped for a 2-56 screw.
I can now screw the screw into the plate and cut it to length and file the burrs off. It's much easier to hold the
plate than the screw to do this kind of mod on them. My source of fasteners is from Microfasteners.  No
affiliation, just a satisfied customer. Also, it's not my only source.

Next, I set up my mill and milled out the truck mounting holes in the tender. I went down approximately .250".
The truck mounting plugs were then turned down to fit in the hole.

The bushings are ready for a test fit.

A check with the coupler height gage showed that the bushing's needed to
have the shoulder trimmed back some to get the coupler to the right height.

A coupled of careful trim cuts and the correct height was attained.