I just repowered an athearn loco dummy kit. what is the best way to lubricate the plastic gears?
Those plastic gears are a slippery engineering plastic and don’t really need lube. But I always give them a touch of grease. When all else fails, Vaseline from the bathroom medicine cabinet works.
VERY lightly with plastic compatible grease. There’s a good one most LHS’s carry, or anything with teflon that’s ok for use with plastic. A little dab’ll do ya’, to use the old Brylcreem expression. The gears are made of a slippery engineering plastic that basically lubes itself. We just help it out a little, but if you use too much grease, great messes evolve. Don’t forget the worm, motor and wheel bearings. Light oil that’s plastic compatible here. Small drps, not drops.
Mo’ power to your dummy!
When I didn’t know any better, I used Vaseline Petroleum Jelly as a lubricant on my old American Flyer S Gauge trains in the late 1940s. For HO scale models I don’t let Vaseline even get close to them. It will dry out and cake up over time, and can place too much load on the motor if you run your trains in an area that is not well heated. I now prefer Dexron III Mercon Automatic Transmission Fluid. It is plastic compatible and is made to withstand temperature variations from 30 below zero to 300 degrees without breaking down or losing its lubricant properties.
Javelina what do you mean by oiling the wheel bearings?
Ditto. I’ve had no problems with Dexron Mercon.
On the axle shafts, where they pass through the steel side plates (visible from the bottom of the loco) there are two little bronze blocks on each axle. They, and the similar ones on the ends of the worm shafts, are made of “Oilite”. Oilite is a product made from powdered bronze, compacted to the shape you see it in on your loco, and then sintered (baked) at high temperature to fuse it. It ends up having lots of porosity, which is good for use because it acts as a sponge to soak up extra oil and redistribute it as the axle dries. A small drop of oil, really small, at each bearing helps to replenish this “sponge effect”. Some guys like specific model oils, some like ATF, some like sewing machine oil. It all works.
Lou
Javelina,
I did not know that about the bearings. I guess I learn something new everyday.[wow]