I’ve got an Athearn SW1500 switcher… It’s DCC ready but does not have a DCC chip. I’m still running old school for a bit until I pick a DCC system for my layout.
Its a nice looking engine… but It doesn’t work well at slow speeds… I’ve cleaned the track. I’ve cleaned the wheels. I’ve checked the track… my other switchers run well at low (switching) speed.
I’ve took it apart and checked the motor, gears ect… everything looks fine… I’ve heard that engines wired for DCC sometimes don’t preform well if they are not used with a DCC system… but I find it hard to believe that that would cause it to not run well at slow speed… and yes I’ve checked the voltage on the track… everything seems to be in order…
are the wheels made of the sintered metal that athearn used in the past or are they nickel silver? I got better performance from my SW1500’s when I replaced the wheels with NWSL nickel silver wheels.
I want to say they are nickel silver… but the wheels have a dark silver color… that’s the best I can describe it… they are not a bright silver… If I have to change the wheels that’s a lot of trouble… but… that might be what I have to do… rats.
The fact that it is DCC Ready doesn’t mean anything – without a decoder and running it under DCC the motor draws quite a bit of current before it will start to turn over. Breaking it in might help some. The gears are probably not lubricated well from the factory, so it might help to lubricate them.
How much has the locomotive been run? Like automobiles, they sometimes need a “break in” period. A few hours of continuous running in both directions should loosen things up and improve slow speed performance.
A trick used with Athearn Blue Box locomotives was to take the trucks apart, clean out the grease, put them back together and put a bit of Pearl Drops tooth polish on the gears. You would then run the locomotive for 20-30 minutes in each direction, take everything back apart, then clean everything out and reassemble it with proper grease and oil. That’s probably harder to do with RTR models than the old BBs.
More than most others, Athearn diesels need a good break-in period to run at their best. I haven’t tried the Pearl-Drops method myself, but I’m guessing it’s very effective since it gets mentioned so often on this subject.
One way to tell what meterial wheels are is by their color. Brass has the usual gold color to it, nickle-silver has a medium-bright silver color, and steel and sintered iron both look more gray. Blackened brass is dark brown, and blackened nickle-silver is very dark silver. All Athearns use blackened nickle-silver now.
Just curious, what power pac(s) are you running? I’ve found that some of the smaller engines are finicky about the type of power they are getting, especially at crawl speeds. Some power pacs just don’t deliver low speed current very well. Most of the MRC units do just fine. I’m using older Tech IIs and and am really surprised at how much better my engines run - even the ones I thought were “cranky”.
I ran the engine on the main line in both direction for quite a while… and put in service on a short line run during an operating session… it seem to be running better at slow speed… still a few jerks… but better…
Archer,… I’m running Tech II … but about to switch the layout to Digitrax.
I suspect your issue lies in the seating of one of the wheel bearing into it’s retainer.
Put the loco upside-down in a cradle and take a look at the bearings. You might find that one of the retainers it set too wide from the factory and that the bearing is sitting too far down as a result. Pop off the bottom truck plate and carefully bend the retainer to a better position. While you are at it, take this opertunity to gauge your wheels.
I have this issue on 2 of my new 1500s, so it would be something to look for. My units run like a dream.
Far as I can tell, looking at the units at my LHS, the Athearn RTR locomotives(except Genesis) are essentially the blue box kit locomotives assembled in China. There are a number of tuneups that will work on all of them.
Make sure rotating parts (flywheels in particular) are not rubbing on the shell.
Make sure the motor is properly seated. The motor shaft needs to be dead level with the frame. sometimes the rubbery motor mount gets kinked resulting a motor slanted fore and aft or side to side. This makes the U joints run at a stiff angle, which they don’t like.
The electric wiper strip that brings juice from the trucks to the top motor brush sometimes looses contact. Sometimes a cleaning and bending for better contact will fix it. More dependable is to hard wire from the trucks to the motor. !/4" “Fastons” from the hardware store will slip neatly over the wiper strips attached to the trucks. Use of Fastons allows you to disassemble the locomotive without soldering.
Take the gear towers on the trucks all apart. Then wipe each tooth of each gear with a pipe cleaner. This will pick up and remove virtually invisible bits of plastic flash from the gear train and make it run quieter and smoother.
Inspect for, and remove any plastic flash on any parts of the drive train.