Improving lateral movement of locomotive coupler arm with Vesconite bimat liners

A Swedish rolling stock operator is replacing the coupler carrier wear plates on their locomotive fleet with Vesconite’s bi-material liners.

The original roller bearing design failed prematurely and the replacement steel liners showed high wear rates over a short period. After testing Vesconite’s bimat wear liners for 50,000 miles, the liners showed negligible wear.

The bimat liner consist of a stainless steel plate with Vesconite Superlube inserts. Vesconite Superlube has an ultra-low coefficient of friction (0.05 - 0.08) and sufficient load-carrying capacity, which improves the bearing performance of the coupler wear liners.

According to the rolling stock operator, an even bigger advantage of Vesconite’s design, is the manual lateral movement of the coupler arm which was made possible with the bimat liners.