I recently Ressurected a couple of old Bachman 44 tonners from the attic. I painted these years ago and they still look good but they run terrible. These are the old two motor jobs. I hear the newer spectrums run better and have one motor. Do they run pretty good and are the shells interchangeable so I can buy any roadname and put my old shells on. Any suggestions would be great. Thanks
The shells should be swapable.
David B
I have a spectrum and I am in the market for another one, waiting on a decoder and custom paint job before I take possesion on thesecond one. The one I have runs great but I had to have a decoder installed. The gu who installed the decoder told me that he expected that Bachmann will soon be selling them w/a decoder, but who knows.
I have four of the newer one motor version.
They are running fine but the noise of the motor is fearsome.
Had the same problem with mine, I added a couple of jumper wires from the right side front truck to the right side rear truck and the same on the left side. This improved the smoothness and the way they ran thru switches alot. Make sure you pass the wires thru the slots in the top of the frames just behind the truck mounting screws, so the body will slide back on. Hope this helps I know it helped mine alot. PS you can solder the wire onto the metal tab of the pickups, just wiggle the sideframe off to get better access to the pickups.
I agree with Strider’s post. Wiring the two motors together improves the performance and electrical pick up. If you add a decoder with BEMF, you’ll get the best results. It’s even possible to squeeze a sound decoder into those little critters! I have several 44 and 70 tonners. The twin motor versions tend to be better than the newer single motor versions…when you get one that has two good motors! [:-^]
Here’s the link on the decoder installation, with pics: http://www.trains.com/TRC/CS/forums/1237975/ShowPost.aspx
My two motor 44 tonner runs well. Your’s ought to run fine with some tender loving care. Check the ground clearance. Early production two motor units ran too low, and tended to hang up or be lifted off the track by turnouts and Kadee magnets. There is a fix. Bachmann made thinner covers for the trucks, gaining a fraction of an inch clearance. I called Bachmann’s service number and they mailed me new and thinner covers, free of charge. That was a while ago, but it might still work.
Clean the comutators. Alcohol on a Qtip works well. Fiddle with brush tension. Clean the wheels with goo gone and check wheel gauge with the NMRA gauge. Hard wire any sliding electrical contacts/wiper bars. Check and clean any wiping contacts in the current path, such as the truck bosses, wheel or axle wipers. Leaving locomotives in storage allows the various electrical contacts to corrode and get flakey.
Thanks for all of the great ideas and suggestions. I think I am going to try to tune up one of the old ones and jumper the motors, and see if I can get it running good. I’m also going to pick up a newer single motor job and see how that goes. Thanks again. Mark
There was an article in either Model Railroading or Railmodel Journal sometime in the late 80’s or early 90’s that described rewiring the 44T. But instead of simply adding a pair of jumper wires, it showed how to wire the motors in series (instead of in parallel as they came from the factory). The expected benefits of this arrangement were not only that the pickup improved, but also that slow speed performance increased significantly. I tried this on the one 44T I own, and although it is still a bit noisy, it runs like a champ. You might consider looking in the magazine index and trying to dig up a copy of this article before you go to far in your efforts - I think it will be worth it.
Tom