Just getting started in the hobby and I acquired a few old Mantua made F7A units. They run horribly, but I really like the paint schemes on them. Are the body shells interchangeable with any other particular brands’ F7 units that are more reliable runners? Thanks.
With enough work you can swap pretty much any shell onto any drive. I’m talking F unit shells onto F unit drives of course. You may have to drill and tap for mounting screws or make brackets, but it can be done. I’d be surprised if Mantua shells would just snap onto Athearn or Proto1000 drives, I’d expect more work will be needed.
Was it me, I think rebuilding the Mantua drives would be as easy as swapping out the drive completely. Tear the power truck all the way apart, clean all the old lube out, replace any lunched parts, polish the wheels and power pickup points and it ought to run OK.
I believe you have two options to play with:
Mantua made these with either a single powered truck or two powered trucks. If you put two power trucks in one loco, then replace the center weight with a larger lead one, you’ll have quite a brute, especially considering it’ll have traction tires, too. You could even add still more lead over the trucks. The big failing with these is that they’ve only got four wheel pick-up.
But, to your main question, early Athearn F7’s connect the shell to the drive with tabs on the chassis that fit in exposed slots on the sides (at the fuel tanks). If you get a drive with these tabs, it will probably fit your shell the same way, but you MAY have to remove all or part of the plastic vertical posts inside the shell that the power trucks attach to. I’d use a grinding wheel in a Dremel tool.
Here’s a catalog page showing the tabs fitting into the slots:
http://www.athearn.com/Products/Default.aspx?ProdID=ATH80218
Note that this is a “Ready to Run” F7, not a “Genesis” F7. Some of the early Genesis drives MIGHT mount this way, but they certainly don’t anymore.
I don’t have a Proto 1000 drive to check its mounting system.
Ed
You can mount them on Athearn F7 drives easily if the drives don’t have the super weight on them. You may have to do a little work on the mounting slots on the sides of the bodys but that’s easily done. If the Athearn drives have the super weights you can easily modify the bodies to fit by cut out the upright ribs inside them. Five minutes with a Dremel with a cutoff disk will do it.
Mantua Tyco offered those locomotives as “F9s” if memory serves
When first introduced the drive mechanism won praise for its power and quiet (it turned with the truck). I suspect they cheapened it over time.
Dave Nelson
All the ones I have are F7’s and all the HO F units I see u\in the catalogs are F7’s. The only F9’s I saw were N Scale.
Believe, Jeff is right, you may be thinking of the Rocco F9 units
Quite true:
Careful examination will reveal the models as F7’s. And that all three are dummies.
Also, note the word “realism” used in the description of NMRA couplers.
Ah, the good old days!
Thanks to HO Seeker for maintaining their archives!
Ed
Thanks Ed. HO Seeker is invaluable. And I suppose the horn hook/X2F/NMRA coupler was more realistic in overall bulk than the coupler they were likely comparing it to: the old Mantua hook and loop.
The Mantua (Tco) F9 was reviewed in Model Railroader’s Trade Topics for July 1960 - twin power, price $13.95. Most of the review concerns MRs then new drawbar pull testing capabilities. The review noted that the shell was “well detailed” but that the wheel base was a foot too long and that the sideframes were mediocre replicas of the prototype. The engine was noted to run smoothly with a top speed of 85 scale mph.
BUT in October 1982 MR they review a Mantua twin motor F7 and the review notes that the model “makes use of the same body casting the firm has used for some time.” What was new was the mechanism. The review said the engine ran “pretty well.” So it seems at some point Manuta stopped billing the shell as F9 and said it was F7.
If our friend is looking at an engine Mantua billed as F7 then it is also likely that it does not have the drive train from 1960 which, again, had a good reputation in its day (unless you were trying to take the darn thing apart!)
The various F unit spotting features were briefly summarized by Dana Kawala in an article in October 2006 MR. Not having a Mantua engine in front of me I am unable to judge the F7/F9 issue – and given the late 1950s knowledge base there is a chance the engine is a hybrid of the two just as Rivarossi’s E unit had E8 and E9 features.
Dave Nelson
Based on the catalogs available at http://tycotrain.tripod.com/tycotrains/id64.html I would presume that the F7 locos I have are from the last two years of production in 2000 and 2001.
There is a fast way to ID an F9A. The F9 can be reliably distinguished from a late F7 only by the addition of an extra filter grille ahead of the front porthole on the side panels on A units. No other F unit has this feature nor will you find it on F9B’s. Also there’s no overhang over the rear door same as a late phase F7.