Dapol Class 22
Having not been able to find a practical solution the do this conversion our usual way, we decided to use the original Dapol wheels and fit some of our 18.83 profile, steel coach tyres to the Dapol wheels.
[Our 18.83 profile steel tyres fitted to the original Dapol Class 22 machined wheels]
The above photo shows the original aluminium wheels off the model machined and fittted with some of our 18.83 profile steel tyres. More details about what was done too follow, with photos, if interest is shown.
[Dapol Class 22 with 18.83 steel tyred wheels]
However, there are somethings that I should point out about doing a conversion this way:
1. If we were to do it this way the customer would need to send us the wheels from their model.
2. If during the conversion anything was to happen to the wheels we would not be able to replace or fix them as we have no spares.
3. It take one person all day (all work done by hand) to modifiy all 8 wheels and therefore, this would make it a very expensive way for us to convert this model.
As you can see from the above photos, it can be done, it just comes down to whether the modeller is willing to pay for this type of conversion.
We have now looked at the costings for this work and have decided that a Nickel Silver tyre version would be too expensive with the current cost of the material. However, we could offer the steel tyre version at a cost of £80.00 per set.
External references
A description of how another modeller has done the same thing is available on one of the RMweb blogs, under the title 'P4 wheels for a Dapol Class 22' and is well worth a read.
(Last update: 30 Jan 2012)