I have an athearn Dash 9-44CW and I need to replace the motor in it. I know I can order a replacement from Athearn, but I was wondering if you all like those motors or if you suggest a better motor for the replacement. I have two of them and one runs good but the motors seem to be very tight. They will hum before they start to move. I have to adjust the start voltage for them to move at a lower throttle position. I am somewhat spoiled, I have three atlass engines: (2) MP15’s and one GP40-2 and they run smooth.
Any thoughts on the athearn motors would be appreciated.
Helix Humper motors are very good replacements for the Athearn motors. Quality problems With Athearn motors was a prime reason for to stop purchasing Athearn RTR locos.
I have noticed a huge difference in the way the genesis and RTR motors run compaired to the older BB motors. Is installing a Genesis motor into a BB engine possible? I have a couple of SD40-2s and Dash 9s that are BB kits that could use an upgrade in the motor department to hopefully smooth them out.
The stock Athearn open frame motors have always been inconsistent in quality, so there’s no guarantee a new one will perform better than the old. I’d suggest replacing with a better quality can motor.
A-Line/Proto Power West repower kits work pretty well; I have a number of them in my Athearn based mechanisms. Try http://ppw-aline.com/re-power.htm . Another option is a Kato motor. In many cases, a Kato motor and its plastic mounting bracket can be screwed directly into the Athearn frame, although it may be necessary to mill some of the metal away to clear the flywheels. You can also use the Kato motor without the mount and shim it to clear the Athearn frame.
I like to hunt for bargains at train shows for repowering options. Undecorated older locos from Kato, including those sold under other brands like Stewart and Atlas, and/or later clones with similar motors, can often be had new in box for less than a repowering kit. The show I attended last month had quite a few Stewart F-units and Kato GP35s for $50 or less. Sometimes it takes a bit of tinkering with such things as universals to adapt the motor to the Athearn drive (depending on the vintage of the Athearn).
Thanks for the tips. after posting to the forum I tinkered with my Athearn and realized the clip that holds the circuit board was excerting added pressure to the brass spring clip; thus making the bushing tight on the armeture. I cut the spring itself in half, which helped a little bit but still runs tight. I will try to see what other motors i can work with.
I suppose you don’t need HO SD40T-2’s or SD45T-2’s then. Some folks who model D&RGW or Southern Pacific in HO don’t have the luxury of stopping their purchases of Athearn RTR. Ahem.
Since you do have a few Atlas (my favorite), I would repower w/ the A-line or other can motor ( Mashima, Cannon Sagami). Not sure what A-line uses, but the low current draw of a can will allow the Athearn BB to play nice with your other locos.
I also found that for mounting can motors to Athearn frames, I fabricate a cradlle fron plastic elec. PVC pipe. 1" works best, but have used the 3/4". Cut the pipe to length of the motor or to clear frame, cut into quarters sections and RTV in place. The PVC craddles aren’t alwas nec and instead of double sided tape use the RTV. I will also RTV a styrene strip on the motor top extending out over flywheels for decoder/ wiring positioning. Of coarse always need to chech the interior shell clearances.
I learned this from working w/ the PPW leaded Athearn frames and remounting their can motors. The double sided tape just wasn’t holding like
The A-Line and Proto Power West (PPW) motors (google them) are indeed Mashima’s with different labels. These motors have Athearn style drive shaft couplings, so other than shiming them to the proper height they are drop-in replacements. 80% of my old Atheans are so equipt. A-Line/PPW also offer a lead cradle that drops into the Athearns frame, which adds a little weight and makes mounting the motor a breeze. The best foam tape I’ve found can be found in the hardware department of many supermarkets. Buy the generic, not the 3-M.
If you use silacone to mount a motor, shim under the flywheels so that the motor does not sit directly on the frame, you only need about a 1/16" clearance. Don’t forget to remove the shims after the silacone has set, don’t ask me how I know.
Another big improvement to Athearns as someone previously mentioned, is to replace the Athearn sintered iron wheels, which are a big cause of dirty track, with Northwest Short Line (NWSL) nicklesilver wheels. You can email NWSL (google it) and just tell him what you’re doing and he’ll hook you up.
So Jay, are you trying to tell us you ended up with brass “solid” motor supports? That’s how I ended up using the PVC pieces to craddle the motor sides. Guess we’ve all been there.
One thing I also noticed, I had thought that positioning the motor to have the shaft alignment the exact plane as the worm was best. I found that less virbration is introduced if the motor is just slightly higher and a slight downward angle is present in the universal shafts. I approached this from a machining standpoint and thought it should work. I don’t have the real answer as to the running smoother with angle on the shafts. Maybe it allows the u joint to have constant pressure and reduce any vibrations???
LOL. I agree about getting the driveline as close to level as possible. One other thing I do to the Athearn BBs is glue (with silicone) the “loose” sliding shaft to one of the sockets (usually the truck side). Push it all the way into the unglued socket and then pull back about an 1/8". I also add some LaBelle’s teflon grease to the unglued socket. This seems to dampen vibration and noise quite a bit.
What if the original poster was commenting on tunnel motors for example? How does coming to this topic and saying “I don’t buy Athearn RTR due to problems with the motors” contribute to the discussion? That is basically the point I was trying to drive home in my earlier post… In other words, suggesting the OP to stop buying Athearn isn’t constructive, rather how to remedy the situation.
Technically, I’d say Athearn should replace the mechanism or motor if it performs poorly and it should be a warranty replacement issue. Based on the discussion here, many have just capitulated and given in to the fact that it’s a losing battle and just replace the darn motor. I haven’t had a chance to test all of my loco’s in storage, but my SD50’s run pretty smooth out of the box, with only some slight cogging at slow crawling speeds - I expect they will get even smoother with operation.
It is helpful to know of some “drop-in” options however if motors need out right replacing!
Well excuse me for being thoroughly disgusted with Athearn’s locos of late. Now, a way to remedy a motor situation with an Athearn? You could send it back to be fixed or replaced but there’s no guarantee that you won’t get another problem motor or a replacement unit with the very same problem. That’s what seemed to keep happening to me. Another option is too pull the motor and replace it with a Mashima, NWSL, A-Line or Helix Humper motor. All are good quality. I’ve used both Mashima and NWSL.
Ive always wondered how well the Micro Mark motors run. Cheaper then anything else but I dont know anyone thats ever bought one. Ive always wanted to buy a few electric motors like a canon product off ebay that matches the demensions of an HO locomotive with the right flywheels and see if I can come up with a cheap option to repower locomotives. But the specs they give on these things are more technical then you can find on any model railroad locomotive. So its hard to compare specs on what your buying.
One more thing. Last I heard, Sagami quit making electric motors for hobby use quite some time ago.
I have to agree with most here that say the older Athearn engines are not the best out of the box. I have several Athearn BB engines, some are better than others and all have can motors in them. My oldest BB engine is from about 1995 and it does run good but not as quiet or smooth as my Kato engines from the same time frame. Take them both apart and the mechs are not all that different. So how is it my Kato runs slower and smoother and also quieter than my Athearn. Well there are 2 main differences between the engines. First is the Motor. The Kato motor is simply a better quality motor, and second is the power pickup system on the locos. The Kato uses NS wheels that are nicely polished and the Athearn are some sort of nasty looking steel or random alloy. The Kato transfers power from wires to the motor and light where the Athearn uses the chassis and a tang to get the power to the motor.
On one engine I own I took the nasty wheels off and used NWSL NS wheels which made a huge difference but still not great. I then modified the engine to use a Kato light board and wired the trucks to the board like on the Kato engine I also isolated the motor from the frame and wired it to the board as well. The giant light was removed and replaced with a light pipe going to the LED from the light board. This made the engine perform much better than the factory BB engine but still not as smooth as I would like. My next venture with this engine is to replace the motor with one of higher quality. Now after replacing every other component, making improvements to the engine but still not achieving the same performance as another engine from the same era why not replace the motor? I personally would prefer to replace the motor with a direct replacement motor that has the Athearn mounting attachments so I can use either the white silicone mounts or the newer screw mounts.
In all fairness, in this modern day of improved technology, there is no reason Athearn should be shipping model train engines with poor performing motors. The old blue box motors should have been retired back in the 1990’s sometime.
As for no guarantee the won’t send you another problem motor - thats just bad customer service if they can’t put the darn thing on a circle of track for a few minutes to make sure it runs well or not before shipping.
But as I say, they have us by the short hairs if we need certain engines.
Fine by me. The last Sagami motors I picked up were awful. I ended up replacing them with Mashimas. You may still find Sagami motors at shows, but I’d be concerned with quality just as much as with the Athearn open frame motors.