Last year i have had fished this tender out of the electric bay (of course with an loco on it).
Have a closer look to the truck sideframes. They are simple one piece castings and no look through.
O.K. i said to me, replace them with better detailed ones.
But alas, nothing is really available. Of course you will find many tender trucks listed on the listings of the "usual suspects". They are marked: "sold out", "n/a" or such else. Even on evilbay nerly nothing. The few ones i found have shipping conditions like "only to lower 48", "no international shipping" and so on.

So i decided to do something with this trucks.
When i had them demounted, i missed suddenly a sideframe Even intense searching actions like emptying the dustbin twice brought no results. The sideframe was still missing. Untill yesterday; when i found it in one of the the slots of the milling machine

So here we are again.
These tender trucks were a simple construction too. Two sideframes soldered to a two-piece traverser, two wheelsets, two screws to hold the two pieces of the traverser together , that was it.
Fist i drilled / milled / filed the most of the casted interior of the truck sideframes away.
Then i made my own springs by winding them out of 0.3mm brass wire. In this case out of soft brass wire as they are only an optical detail and soft brass is easier to bend:


Here i have cut suitable lenghts and set loosely into the frames.
Not 100% perfect, but new springs are made easy and quick.



Next steps:
- drill 1,5mm bores into the center of sideframes and traversers.
- unsolder the traversers
- solder four bolts made out of pieces of 1.5mm brass into the bores
- solder the spring imitations onto their places on the sideframes
- made four bushes out of brass tube with 1.5mm immer diameter
- solder them onto the inner of the traversers
- clean all from excess soldering lead
- solder four left over pieces of winded wire as stop onto the end of the 1.5mm bolts


- fit and mount all together
- made a controlling photo
- refit those parts which are not correct fitted like this spring, in this case easy by bending because it is soldered only on the lower end


Remount the trucks to the tender and see how this full equalized parts are working.

Only the pick ups are still missing at this time.

Lutz

That was a lot of work, but worth it. The trucks look much better now !

Very nice work . It's a big improvement over the stock ones.

The pick ups:




A look to the bottom.


A look to the upside.
The wipers are made out of 0.3mm bronze wire. This has the springing force which is necessaray for the purpose of wipers and is not too stiff.
A small sheet of 0.3mm styrene was glued witn CA onto the traverser.
A lenght of bronze wire was soldered onto a 0.2mm copper sheet of similar seize.
Then forming the bronze wire to suitable pick up wipers with some sprung loading.
The additional wipers in front of the photo are made zu limit the equalizing action and to prevent a 180° turn over of the sideframes. They are soldered directly onto the traverser. As wanted addition they improve the electric current flow because they are bypassing weak (electric current flow) points like the axle bearings and the sideframe bearings.

When the tender is standing on the rails these pick ups are invisible.


Lutz