A couple months ago, Jeffrey-Wimberly sent me 4 bachmann FT’s out of the nether regions of his junk box. (Thanks Jeffrey!) He said they had issues.
That they did! [:O]
2 of these were in the original paint, Santa Fe Warbonnet, and 2 had been repainted, one of those in Jeffrey’s black and white paint scheme. (Jeffrey sent me a pic of the engines, but he pulled it off photobucket now)
I didn’t fool with them right away, as I was in the middle of a home remodeling job, (more of a total cosmetic renovation!) so they sat awaiting attention.
I finally got a “round tuit”, and pulled the shells off the locos. The shells went into the kitchen sink for a cleanup, and I started looking over the chassis. Jeff had pulled the decoders out of the 2 DCC locos for some of his other engines. There were no lights, broken couplers, and other problems.
I blew the chassis off with compressed air, disassembled and cleaned and lubed everthing, and reassembled t
Go for it. They were of no use to me.
If the drives are anything like my Bach F9, you should be pretty happy with them. It’s got around 1000 hours on it and runs like a champ!
Yep…pretty much the same drives. I also have an F9, that ran on the display track in my hobby shop 8-10 hours a day, 6 days a week for almost 3 years, with no major issues. I did have to replace the motor brushes, though. It still runs today.
BTW…I stripped the two painted units with Easy Off. It only took about 20 minutes each. It stripped most of the repaint off, but only took the decals off, but didn’t seem to hurt the factory paint.
Jeffrey…what kind of paint was that?
Rotor
As far as I know it was Testor’s enamel model paint.
If they have a “F9” drive then the trucks have the centers too far apart. The FT had a unique truck spacing different from the rest of the F units.
It probably won’t make any difference, but in case you are trying to letter or detail them for a particular road, don’t judge decal or detail placement based on relative postion to the trucks.
The shells also have the “chicken wire” grills cast in the shell behind the carbody trusses when the actual units had the chicken wire in front of the trusses.
Dave H.