Would a steamer that is “out-of-quarter” tend to wobble down the track rather than pulsate back and forth?
The reason for asking is that I have a BLI Blueline Niagara that has ~15 min. of runtime on it so far. It runs well - except for a slight but noticeable and persistent pulsating or lurching back and forth. I checked and lightly greased the locomotive axles with Labelle #106. It made no difference. The drivers appear to hesitate (bind?) slightly just before the drive crank starts its upward travel from the 6 'o clock position.
Could this possibly be caused by too much side-to-side play in the driver? (My Mohawk had a similar issue and shimming eliminated the problem.) Or, does the engine just need to be broken in further? My guess is that it’s the former.
Gosh, there isn’t much in the hobby more frustrating than a steamer that has trouble moving smoothly, Tom.
Would this be one of those steamers with a loose gear tower cap or retainer? Would it be of the same construction at the bearing and axle interface where some bearings need shimming? Is there an axle out of true, a driver center not centered, a bent axle, maybe a rod making strong contact, but still nudging past another when the motor’s amperage spikes enough to force it all past?
BLI engines, in my experience, do better over time, but only if all they really need is breaking-in. If it is a more definable, and ultimately correctable, matter, it would be best to determine it and to deal with it in a concrete way, IMO.
-Crandell
Edit - Tom, you could make a small paper or clear plastic template showing the mean angles of crank to somewhere else notable on the various drivers. Place all cranks at bottom dead center, or top, whatever, and make a template showing where they should be reference a vertical or horizontal line or object. Then place this template on each driver. The line will point to the crank’s center in each case, but you will soon see if one is off by more than a couple of degrees. Otherwise, it’s the ol’ return slip or a NWSL quartering tool.
Nothing can be determined without working with the model and checking into the possiblity that it has a wheel that wobbles or is out of quarter. If it is out of quarter, the opposite side is going across the center of the axle when the side you are looking at is at the 6 or down position. That is a good indication the rod is binding because of a quartering problem, but it can also indicate the rod does not have the correct amount of length between the holes that fit on the drivers pins.
To get a model to run super great, they must be in quarter and no wheel out of round or wobbling. Any of these situations will cause a steam model to run very poor. If you run it for days on end, it will only get slightly better if you have a quartering problem.
I would send it back for repair after talking to BLI and ask for a replacement that runs well.
Hope it works out. I have many of the BLI locomotives and the Union Pacific first run MT73 mountains were very poor runners. It did shape up and start running better after 25 hours or so on a roller set. The problem I experienced was not quartering, but simply being too tight and needing lubrication.
Probably not very common, but I had one loco with a definite “hitch” in the giddy-up: the problem was caused by one of the piston rods bottoming-out (hitting the inside of the front of the cylinder casting). [:O] By the time that I found it, the rest of the rods and valve gear were completely free of any binds which they might have had. [(-D] A quick pass with a cut-off disc shortened the offending rod suitably.
Thanks for the input, fellas. The low-speed response is actually VERY good - especially with the Lenz Silver MP decoder that I installed into it. It crawls quite well at speed step 001. It just lurches slightly front-to-back when moving forward or backward.
I think I’ll probably try and break the Niagara in for a couple more hours to see if anything changes. If it doesn’t, I’ll either try and shim the drivers (as BLI did with my Mohawk) or contact BLI about sending it into their backshop for repair.
Can’t say enough good things about the sound on these Blueline Niagaras. VERY impressive! [:)][tup] Everytime I fire her up initially, I have to click the volume down a few notches. Otherwise, all the dogs on the layout start howling.