I turned down the sound level on my HO PK E-7 engine and I could now hear a whirring sound. Engines been around the yard a few times and was in need of some Lube.
Now, if you have ever taken one of these apart you know what a pain it can be. Motor is fully encased in the metal weight, you have to pull the PC / Decoder board, speakers and all the wiring to get to the motor.
I have oiled the motor bearings, worm gears, U joints and lubed the trucks. I have not reinstall the electronics yet and running the engine on straight DC on a make shift stand. Have the leads clip to the motor wires. Noise has pretty much gone away, so I am fine there.
My question is what was the most likely part that was making the whirring sound to began with. In other words, gears, worm gear, drive shaft or the motor? Reason I ask is when the sound comes back and it will over time I like a idea of where to lube. If it is the trucks or the U joints I might be-able just to pull the speakers, and not everything next time around.
My “guess-tamate” would be the motor bearings as this is usally the case so plan on a complete tear down when that starts as you will also want to lubricate the worm gear bearings, in other words anywhere you have a metal to metal surfaces. Metal to Delrin, (or plastic), are not as essential and in all probablity are not required to oil at all. One drop will last years there.
The 800 pound gorilla in the room is why do us customers have to perform so much follow-up maintenance on these products right out of the box? Between cracked axles (Proto/Walthers, Atlas) and whiny unlubed motors (OP’s engine, and the infamous screaming Bachmann Shay that is a nightmare to take apart) is it so difficult for the factories to squirt a couple drops of oil into the motor bearings when it’s apart, and save us all a ton of aggravation? It’s a bloody shame considering what they charge for their stuff!
I can not complain about needing to lube the E-7, it has 100 hours on it. Should would have made life easier if they had drilled some access (spell check?) in the weight where you could lube the motor bearing.
I all so understand now why they gear the E-7 with sound so low. You would think they would have the same sizes motor’s of the none sound engines. Nope, they use the smaller motor they use in the PK 1000 F-3’s. It is about 2/3 the sizes on my E-6’s motors with no sound.
Engine is back on the rails and nice and quite again.
“Should would have made life easier if they had drilled some access (spell check?) in the weight where you could lube the motor bearing.”
Ken, I’ve always felt that way about manufacturers, why not make those humongos metal weights with access points. I can just see that in some makers advertising material…
“All our locomotives have EASY access to all lubrication points.”