We finished reassembling the truck after installing refurbished wheel sets, jacked the end of the car up, pulled the shop truck out and rolled the rebuilt truck back under and lowered the car back onto it.
After reattaching the air brake hose, the side bearings had to be adjusted. Me, being the littlest guy in our group, was chosen to squeeze in to the gap between the car body and the truck frame to perform that task.
An explanation of the side bearings. These prevent the car body from rocking from side to side on the trucks when encountering rough track. The suspension in the truck side frames should handle that. The bearings are made up of a composite material, similar to brake pads, bonded to a chunk of steal that has mounting holes at either end to bolt to the truck frame. Normally there is supposed to be a little over 1/16" (1.6mm) clearance. When the truck rotates as the car goes around a curve, the bearing blocks can make contact and slide along under the car. However after unbolting and removing the bearing blocks to clean the rust scale off all the surfaces including the existing shims, the gaps increased considerably. I had to fabricate some new shims, slotted to slide around the retaining bolts, while the blocks were loosely mounted in place then tighten up the bolts again.This image was taken when the car was first jacked up off the truck.
