My son just got a new Athearn F59PHI & two Bombardier coaches yesterday he had saved up for. But when I ran them I found the engine to run at about half the speed of my other Athearn engines & it was very noisey, it runs much like the old Blue Box units. I’m wondering if eneyone else has this engine & if they have the same problems. Athern had come such a long way in the quality & porformance of they products I would hate to see them go backwards.
Athearn mechanisms vary widely in performance, including the older blue box stuff. The F59PHI has a similar design internally to the blue box locos, and like them may become smoother and quieter with use. Do some break-in running of an hour of more in each direction of the loco by itself on a loop of track and see if starts running better.
Yes they run a lot slower then anything else I own, diesel wise. I have two of them in GO Transit colours and they were slow right off the bat. I added decoders to mine and adjusted the top speed to its max but still they are a little slow. Mine will barely pull 8 cars too.
Thank you, now I know it’s not just mine. I do know of the brake in on the Athearn units, as I have plenty of blue box unit as there so cheap at the shows. I also have some newer stuff & was expecting more from them, this is a sad return to the old.
I had a similar situation with my RTR VIA P42. Took it apart, lubed it up & it’s been fine ever since
Gordon
Mine are well broken in, I would run them for 8 hours non stop at train shows.
I did Email Athearn & was told to back off the motor mount scews under the fuel tank 1/4-1/2 turns. I did this & found it to help the noise problem alot. Still no power or speed though.
You know I have one in San Diego Coaster and Amtrak Surfliner Paint but I have not ran them in some time. I want to say that I did not have any problems with the noise and I assumed that they speed was fine for me. I do agree that they do not pull very well. I would pull 5 bomb cars and once the unit would hit a grade I would get wheels spinning.
No problems with my 12 or so mostly Amtrak West/Surf. I take most of my new Athearn engines trucks off and drop Labelle Oil in the gears when they’re new so they never get stuck while running. The newer ones run better and quieter the first ones I bought are kinda noisy.
If the wheels are slipping, just add some weight. I buy bulk fishing sinkers. You can use them as is, or hammer them flat or into any shape you need.
I just got this HO 3-car set and loco in Metrolink. I was also a little disappointed at first in the way they ran. Engine was noisy and cars bounced through switches/crossings. On the engine, I removed the car body and worm gear lid. Cleaned up some of the lubricant. Then oiled the bronze wheel bearings with light oil. No need to removed anything for this. Use a fine needle bottle to fit between wheels and truck. I reassembled the unit (car body is a little stubborn but don’t give up). It runs much better. It still is noisy when it first starts running, but that improves a lot as it runs. For the 3 cars, I removed the trucks and checked the wheelsets with an NMRA standards gauge. All 12 axles/wheelsets were out of gauge (too narrow). I adjusted just by turning wheel and pressing one way or the opposite. Replacing wheelsets in the trucks showed some clearance problems which were corrected by light filing or simply reversing the wheelset. The bouncing and wobbling disappeared to my relief. At this point the train runs very well. I have had similar problems with the “Ready to Roll” products. The motors and wiring have improved a lot, but they still need a “tune up” out of the box to get them to perform well.
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