As I mentioned on this past weekend’s “photo fun” I am in possession of an old Athearn rubber-band driven F-unit from my grandfather. I put it on the layout last night and by-golly the engine worked! Now the rubber bands were very old and need replacing before I can see whether the locomotive will move. Does it matter what kind of rubber band I use? Will a thicker rubber-band give me more traction?
Erik
Oh boy.
Grab a 50 cent bag of assorted rubber bands at the drug store in your area and try em until you find one that fits.
Yer dealing with very early technology here in the hobby. If you find one that fits good, stand back when you apply the power… you are going to go into Warp as they say on star trek.
I havent been this excited since Spacemouse brought home a engine that needed some TLC some years ago on these forums.
You can use some O-rings from a hardware store if you know what size to get, or as others have suggested, get some assorted rubber bands and experiment.
Stand back as you apply power because one of those old Athearns will top out at about a scale 300 mph.
I don’t know how they ever stayed on the track back in the days when people used Atlas Snap track with 18 inch radius curves.
We have a club member with one of them and we don’t dare run it at full speed around the club layout, where the minimum radius is 26 inches.
A proper size O ring would make it run the smoothest. You don’t want it too tight or you may damage some bushings.
Of course you could always splurge and order genuine Athearn parts - 90101 -24 pcs@$3.60
didnt they make a worm drive gear system that easliy replaced the rubber band? i think it some what just snaped in…
yea theres a set of gear that’ll fit but its pretty expensive and ive been told it didnt work very well. To help with the jerks you might wanna consider a flywheel. it helps even out the starts and stops. Maybe a resistor would help in cutting the speed, dunno what youd need but it might work by dropping the voltage that gets to motor ( but it’d probably cut down your starting speed too , meaning youd have to apply 30-40% of the throttle before anything moves)
I’m wondering if those Athearn rubber bands aren’t leftovers from the days when the rubber band drive was new, and that they haven’t been stuffed away in a warehouse somewhere all these years, dry rotting and becoming unusable.
In the days of the Hi-F drive, the cat’s meow was to equip an Athearn body (the best available at the time) with a Hobbytown of Boston drive and chassis (also the best available at the time). Even today, such a combination would look pretty good, and hold its own performance-wise, while out-pulling everything in sight.
just my thoughts
Fred W
Pitman even offered a replacement motor but still rubber band…the stops and start were somethig else…Hard on those HO passingers…Cox 47
No cacole they are not leftovers rotting in a warehouse and I think it somewhat disrespectful that you would even post that. They are some type of flat rubber unlike the old rubber band style (which is what the old ones were).
I betcha!
I would think there might be a new material used since then but you think there is probably a supply of all original parts rotting away somewhere for everything made at some point in our history.
We already have to turn the throttle up halfway before these fancy dual mode DCC engines move.
50 years and still no progress.