I just won this engine thru Ebay. The seller let me know ahead of winning the auction that there is intermittent contact between the rear truck and track. The engine will run for a short period of time, but after a minute or so, it just stops. The seller tested the engine by isolating the rear truck with a business card and stopping up the front of the engine with a wedge of wood in the track. It ran until he shut it off. I did the exact same thing and got the exact same results. When I took the card out from under the rear truck however, again I got the exact same results.
I believe there is a short there somewhere…am I wrong? I’d like to repair it myself but I do not know how to remove the shell and or rear truck. Is there a schematic that I can download or that someone can send me a link to so I can see how things come apart?
I don’t think this is from the Proto 2000 line but it IS in a VERY clean and bright paint scheme and lively color. You’d be hard pressed to find any dirt on this engine what-so-ever too!! This guy kept it real clean.
If anyone has any schematics on this engine or knows where I can find it, please let me know. Thanks, Steve
For GP-39- near as I can tell from just looking at it, it MAY BE a Proto 2000…Thanks to Stevert for referring me to that site…TONS of reference pages for just about every manufacturer out there and for what I can tell from looking at the diagram for a Life Like GP-18, it comes DAMN close to a 2000. As I mentioned, there is a lot of detail on the engine itself and it looks as if the clips for the shell snap into the chassis fore and aft of the fuel tank just offset from the inside wheelset of the trucks. So, it MAY BE a 2000.
How different are the 1000 and 2000 series? Is that the only two GP-18’s that Life Like made? I know that they are under Walthers now…that’s what the Walthers site said but I got no response from them.
In keeping with my tradition on keeping my engines as prototypically historic as possible, I’d like to model this particular engine with two blowers on them. Preferably for The NYS&W when they ran the 1800, 1802 and 1804. I read somewhere that the Susie sold them off. I used to live in N. Jersey where these 3 engines at various times used to switch different sidings along the southern division where I lived and INSTANTLY fell in love with them.
Flanking the center fan, there were two “mushroom” like blowers on the roof line. What were they called and where can I get my hand on a couple? Thanks to you guys as well!!
If both trucks are powered, you have the Proto 2000 model. In order to remove the trucks, the weight must come off, and that means unwiring. If you haven’t messed with anything like this before, you may want to find a local model RR club or NMRA division and ask for help.
One thing you can try is to check for cracked drive gears. P2K locomotives were known for this, but its not hard to fix. The usual symptom is a thumping noise when it runs, it could also jam up the drive and stop dead. You just need to hold the locomotive upside down and pry the cover off the bottom of the truck. The wheelsets can be pulled out and checked for cracked gears. Check inside the truck for anything that might be jamming up the gears, too. You can order replacement wheelsets from Walthers, or you can use Athearn ones if you have some.
As to the “blowers”, I found some pictures of the Susie Q’s GP18’s on RR Fallen Flags site. What they are is spark arrestors mounted on the exhaust stacks. That style was more common on switch engines, but it sure looks neat on the Geeps! Detail Associates makes them in HO scale, part # SA 2102. Check with your LHS, or you can get them from Walthers.
Remove the bottom cover of the truck to get to the wheels. Remove an axel and see if you can turn the wheels in the gear by hand. If so you have a cracked gear and you will have to replace it. You can use Athearn gears as well as Proto…
Also check the wheel gauge of the wheels. If the wheels are pushed into the gear to far the ends of the wheel shafts touch and create a short. Spread the wheels a touch to seperate them. I had one that would short when the room warmed up and would not when it was cold.
By now you have probably figured out the answer to your problem but just in case you haven’t fixed it yet I too have a Life Like GP18 that jerked when running on the track. Walter’s advised me that new wheel sets would fix the problem so I replaced the wheel sets with the new Walthers parts and sure enough fixed the problem. However in the course of this repair a new problem developed that being a short which caused the engine to stand still on track. I traced the short to one of the new Walthers wheel sets. On taking the wheel set apart I realized that the two half axels were touching inside the gear. On one wheel the short axel piece was not inserted far enough into the wheel so this made the axel too long inside the gear so it touched the end of the opposite axel causing a short. If I moved the wheels apart so the axels would not touch then the wheel set was out of guage (too wide). I fixed it by replacing the faulty wheel and short axel piece with one of the original wheels that I had replaced. It now works! The wheel set consists of two half axels which are joined by the plastic center gear piece. You can pull each wheel and half axel out of the plastic sleeve of the gear piece by hand with a twisting motion. If you can pull the wheels apart just enough to keep the ends of the half axels from touching each other inside the gear sleeve, and still maintain the correct wheel guage, you have solved your problem! Good luck