I have some of the original RS-2s made by Life-Like which I have never run until recently. I took one of them out and ran it on my layout the other day. It ran fine, which made me wonder why I hadn’t used it before now. I probably only ran it for a few minutes along with a few older Atlas engines, then I let it sit for a day or two.
Last night I turned on the power and it wouldn’t run. The light would come on, but it wouldn’t move. i took off the shell and the motor seemed bound up. I turned the flywheels a bit and tried again. It moved, but barely, even at full speed (these are just plain DC). I checked to see if the gears were cracked. If they are, the cracks are very small and don’t seem to be enough to cause the problem since it ran fine the last time. Regardless of what I did, the engine would barely turn. It did, but slowly and erratically.
So does anyone have any idea of what could have happened in between sessions?
I happen to be “going over” three of my old Proto 1000 RS-2s. These are probably sixteen years old and were some of the first that I did decoder installs in. I don’t ever recall having to change the axle gears in them (the RS-2s) but I may have.
Once you have the shell off it is pretty easy to release the “worm gear clip” that holds the trucks to the frame. It has two ears that keep the truck from falling out.
You can unclip this and pull the worm gear out, careful not to lose the small square bearing and the thrust washer. Then the drive shafts will slip out. Now you can spin the motor by itself to see if anything is binding there. Then you can spin the wheels to see if the gearing in the trucks is OK.
I had one once that somehow got a small chunk of plastic in the truck gearing. With the sticky grease, it would present a problem then go away for a while.
If you want to continue carefully unsnap the bottom cover off the trucks. Take careful note of how everything goes together. Clean out the old grease first using a cotton swab or paper towels. Then use a solvent to clean out the remaining grease.
Look everything over. Try to twist the wheels on the axle gear. If they can be turned fairly easily you will have to replace the axle gears. Athearn #60024 will work. Most Proto owners change out the gears just to be sure. You will need to regauge the wheels using an NMRA wheel flange gauge. If the axles are pushed in too far the axle ends can short inside the gear.
I have had a few cracked gear situations where the motor shaft would stop in just the right (wrong) position and the drive shaft and motor would lock-up.
I have been using the Labelle PTFE gear grease but others seem to like nano oil or Labelle gear oil. Just be sure what you use is plastic compatible. There’s a very light oil by CRC called 2-26 which is what I use on the motor sleeve bearings.
The grease that LL used in the truck gear train tended to turn to sticky goo over time. It may have settled to the bottom, then was stirred up by the ops last evening. Once it rested, things gelled up again, but with it sliming all over your gears enough so things are bound up. Clean up the trucks, then see how things do. The drop of oil on the motor bearings also a good idea at this age.
Ed’s discussion of cracked gears may be relevant. However, the grease cleanup is the lowhanging fruit here. Cracked gears are usually reliable noise emitters, as in clunk, clunk, clunk, etc, so unless that’s sound like what is happening, you may be good on that issue.
I may be wrong but I think that P1K locomotives are not known for the cracked gear problem. However, Proto locomotives are known for poor lubrication out of the box. Follow Ed instructions about cleaning and lubricating and you will have a nice runner. I have one of those P1K RS-2 and I like it a lot.
Thanks for all of the suggestions. Here is what I have found so far - the trucks are very well lubed. Nothing was dried up or frozen from lack of lubrication. Some of the gears are cracked, but I didn’t get any noise when I ran it before.
I took it all the way down to removing the motor. The motor doesn’t seem to have a lot of torque when I apply power, but I don’t have anything to compare it to, so maybe that’s how they are. It turns freely, though.
There does seem to be a lot of play in the axles (too much) and the square axle bearings seem to move out of place. When I replaced the gears in another engine I noticed that the new replacement gears are a little wider which eliminates some of the play. Since the gears are cracked, I’m going to try replacing them.
If that doesn’t solve the problem, then I don’t know what else I can do. I still don’t understand how it ran nicely one day and then quit the next time I turned it on.
Oh, I have plenty of Atlas RS-3s. RS-1s too. And some Athearn RS-3s, which ran horribly until I started replacing cracked gears. I just thought the RS-2s would be different.
If that were my RS-2, I would take the motor out and clip 2 alligator clips to a DC power pack and the others to the motor leads. If the motor spins without noise (which it probably will) then you have a binding issue in the trucks.
With them being LL models, you check for cracks in the gears as you’ve been doing, but really, if you haven’t ever done a teardown of the trucks on a model that’s been sitting, then that’s on you. You really need to do that. Pull them apart, noting position and orientation of each gear, clean the trucks out with alcohol, and then lube with labelle grease or oil - the lube type varies between open and closed style trucks, check their site for details.
Unless a model is brand new (as in manufactured within the last year or so,) I generally do this to avoid actually damaging anything or putting undue stress on any of the components. Some of these bits can be really expensive or hard to find.
EDIT: Okay, I just read your last post. Sometimes when you see a loco work one day and not move the next, it’s because of a cumulative load on the motor - i.e. you have binding at multiple spots. Grease is a common cause for this, because once old grease works its way through the entire truck and then it cools, you’ve basically spread the “glue” that it’s turned into throughout the gear path.
Cracked gears can also cause this. Depending on what gear cracks, it can bind multiple gears in the path or just one.
Gear axle slop is a rare one but I’ve also had this happen on one loco, so I thought it worth mentioning. This is where the axle that the gear sits on (sometimes molded into the gear, sometimes not - in the case of Athearn/LL/Walthers parts, the gear spins on an axle. In Bachmann, the axle is part of the gear and spins in a bearing hole) This problem is always wear-based and will require replacing the gear. This happens as a
I guess I’ll know when I rebuild the trucks. But since this engine probably doesn’t have one hour of running on it, I don’t think anything has worn. And even though folks have mentioned lubrication, this engine was practically dripping wet with oil/grease out of the box. It’s all through the drivetrain. So I don’t think anything is binding from lack of it.
Again, I just don’t see what could have happened from one day to the next.
Are you sure this locomotive is factory new? The locos I’ve seen that were “dripping” usually were from some other problem that someone tried to solve by lubricating it.
The important part is cleaning every part that went into the truck, you have to get all that old gunk out. It’s usually got dirt or other debris caked in it. It also won’t be reconstituted to any helpful extent by putting more oil/grease in, which is what some folks are under the impression of.
Disassemble the trucks, clean them completely with alcohol, relubricate, and make sure the driveshafts aren’t binding between motor and truck either. AND MAKE SURE you mark the gear orientation so that they keep the same wear pattern. put a dot of siver marker on the mating sides of a gear and inside the truck if you have one. They’re easy to get in the art section of most dept stores.
It would seem very strange to have cracked gears after so little mileage… Anyway, don’t forget to make sure that your wheels and track are clean. Having loco lights on without any action could mean poor electrical pickup. Good luck!
Some cracked by merely sitting on the shelf. Either (or all) the bore was just too tight, molding not done properly (cooling too fast) or the plastic stock was not up to spec.
Temperature changes probably affected the gears, too. That’s why most L-L users plan to replace the gears weather they needed to or not.
Jim, when placing the wheelsets back in the truck frame (you have to jiggle and poke with a skewer or toothpick) to engage the gear and get the two square sintered bronze bearings into the recess in the stamped metal side frame. Be sure they seat properly. It is easy to have one bound in there. Should be plenty of side-to-side play. On some occasions I have gently and slightly bent in the metal side plate to help keep the square axle bearing in place.
Thanks for the tips, Ed. I did what you said and used a small very thin screwdriver to get the bearings into place. And the bottom cover plate helps to keep them in place too once it’s snapped back on, but they still seemed awfully loose to me. I thought about bending the plate slightly too. But I figured there’s no sense doing anything more until I get new gears.
As I said, I just replaced the gears in an Athearn engine this week and I noticed the new ones were a bit wider which seemed to keep the bearings in place better. Actually, that was the reason I even ran the engine mentioned above. I had it sitting on the layout coupled to a train from last week. I put the repaired Athearn engine on the front of the train with the P1K engine behind it. That was when I found out something was wrong. The Athearn engine sat their struggling to pull the non-working P1K engine and the train behind it.
So here’s what happened since my last post. While I was waiting for my new gears to arrive, I took out a second brand new P1K RS-3. This one had never been out of the box before. This one did the same thing as the first even though the first one had been run briefly. It just sat and vibrated under full power.
I took it apart and noticed the drive train seemed stiff, so I took the trucks apart and oiled everything. The parts that seemed to be binding were the square bearings for the worm gears. Once I got everything lubricated and back together it ran just fine.
Then the new gears arrived so I assembled the original engine. It ran much better, but something still seemed stiff. With taking two engines apart and replacing the axle gears. I may have forgotten to lubricate the worm gear bearings. Once I did that, the first engine ran fine too.
So all of you were right about it being a lubrication issue. But the gears were cracked too, so taking them apart allowed me to replace them at the same time. I also replaced some of the truck leads since the wire LL used seemed pretty stiff.
Thank you for all of your feedback. I just have two more questions:
There is sure a lot of play in the truck gears. Is that normal?
I don’t recall ever lubricating any of my older Atlas/Kato engines. They run just fine, but do you think I should? I don’t think I’ve ever taken one apart.
After a while, Life-Like owners pick up a “bag-of-tricks” accumulated over years of doing what you just accomplished, strip down the mechanicals, make an evaluation and look for the tell-tale signs of where the potential problems may lie.
Yes, the gear-train is pretty sloppy but as you found out, quality lube is important for the smooth running. The last couple of LLs I overhauled, I placed an additional thrust washer on the worm gear shaft. That takes up a little of the play and I think it helps with the forward/reverse action on the gear train. What I mean is, did you ever have an engine that runs smooth as silk in one direction and kicks and bucks in the other. The thrust washers seem to help by taking up a little of that slop.
I recently overhauled a bunch of LL E6; 7; and 8s. I didn’t like the extreme sloppyness of the slip joints in the drive shafts. They were molded way out of round, too. Caused a nasty vibration at higher speeds. I found a nice universal drive shaft kit that replaces the drive shaft and universal parts.
Some of my LL engines have been sitting for more than a year or two. I’m amazed at just how quickly the lube seems to disappear on some. Once you get the knack of snapping that bottom cover off the trucks you can pop them open and check right away.
Another handy tool I found were the Bachmann test stand rollers. These things are really made well and are a big help when doing a “running gear” bench inspection.