I am in the process of going through my roster adding DCC and sound. While at it I am replacing old grease and oiling bearings.
Next up are two LL Proto 2000 E8s that I purchased used 15 years ago. They appear to have low run time and I’ve only run them a handful of times.
Should I attempt to remove the large weight to gain access to the motor to oil the shafts? Am I over thinking this? Should I leave well enough alone?
Thanks
If it’s not making any noise, leave it alone. Shaft bearings are made from oil impregnated bronze and gears are made from slippery delron plastic, neither of which require lubrication.
Over time, the bronze bushings may harden from use and could benefit from a touch of lubrication. A slight squeeling noise will be an indicator.
Factories pack the trucks full of grease to eliminate gear rattle from poor tolerances, not because they need lubrication. Excessive lubrication is the number one cause for dirt and crud build up, which you don’t want. So many people think you have to oil and grease everything, which is just not the case.
Mark.
Hi,
If you’re going to add a decoder and you’ll have the motor wires disconnected anyway you could easily remove the weight and check out the motor and drive shafting.
I’ve been doing the same thing with dozens of my older diesels over the years. Some are on their second go-around with removal of the motor only decoder and installation of a recent sound decoder.
While you have the guts opened you can better evaluate things. I found many of the E-unit drive shafts to be very sloppy and out of balance. Some I clean up and others I replace with A-Line parts.
I like to solder new, more flexible silicone wire to the truck pickups and add a short length of heat shrink to act as a strain relief.
Truck-wirB by Edmund, on Flickr
Sometimes the factory wiring is stiff and the solder joint at the truck is frayed.
If you’ve never had the gearcases open now is a good time to remove the peanut-butter grease and clean the worm out and reapply a little Labelle PTFE 106 or equivalent.
L-L_SD-7fw by Edmund, on Flickr
Good Luck, Ed
Motor bearings do squeal if they need lubrication. That would be rare.
Popping the truck retaining covers off each of the worm drives is a good idea in order to clean out any excess or dried out grease. Very little grease is required in order to protect the plastic gears from the metal worm. In fact, Labelle oil on the gears is probably enough since the gears benefit from just oil. It is easier to ensure all those gears are clean and lubricated if you do this from the top of the truck after carefully removing the snap on worm gear covers. You’ll notice these have little extensions that ride on the frame and stop the trucks from dropping out of the locomotive.
Larry Puckett, The DCC Guy, must have been reading this thread [:-^]
Good Luck, Ed
I have a pair of Proto 2000 E8s that I bought over ten years ago. They were intended to replace my Athearn PAs when they died, but I rarely run the PAs because I had a small layout, and they still run like new.
So these E8s have probably been in the boxes for over 15 years, still new.
Am I creating a problem? Should I pull the E8s out of the package and clean off the grease and run them a bit?
EDIT: Well, I looked at my picture, and they are actually E7s! That is a surprise.
-Kevin
Since the shells come off easily I’d take them off and have a look but only if I intended to put the locomotives into service.
Just running them without checking for solidified grease on the worm gears would not be beneficial.
No need to run an electric motor unless you are using the locomotive on your layout. Motors don’t need to be run just for the sake of moving the motor.
Thank you to all who have offered their advice. I am going to move forward with removing the weight and oiling the motor bearings.
Chris
Keep us posted.
Rich
Two months later and I finally finished putting one of my E8s into service. I cleaned and lubed everything. The grease in the gear boxes was in good shape, but I cleaned and replaced just in case.
The TCS WOW121 works great and sounds good. Only problem is how loud the drivetrain is at higher speeds. These have always been a bit noisy tho. Kinda like old Athearn BB.
Overall I am happy and am getting started on number 2.
Chris
Well done, Chris. [Y]
Rich
Are these LL P2000 E8’s prone to having cracked axle gears ?
Flywheel out of balance might cause excessive noise. I’ve trimmed flywheels with a flat jewellers file or flexible sandpaper (Emery cloth is a brand name for silicon carbide fabric backed sandpaper for metal.)
I put a little grease on the frame where the tiny metal particles fly off in order to capture them and wipe off when done. You run the motor and place the file along the flywheel using the frame as a guide and tool stop. Run the file lightly back and forth across the spinning face of the flywheel. Very, very light cuts because all you’re trying to do is trim off any high spots. Sandpaper strip is harder to use because you want a light but even pressure across the spinning face of the flywheel to remove any high spots.
The other causes of gear noise at higher rpm include worm gear end float which requires thrust washers and plain old running in which is easy to do, and fun.
My very noisy Bachmann Plus GP35 settled down to just noisy after about half an hour of full speed running in both directions. It’s very possible your models have no or very low “miles” and will quiet down after a while.
Over the years I’ve “tuned up” probably fifty-or-so Life-Like and later Walthers E series diesels.
Flywheel balance may be an issue but not something I’ve necessarily encountered. What I have found are poorly molded drive shaft slip couplings and poorly fitting universal joints.
The slip joint “spline” is only a single, loose fitting key. A hex would certainly be an improvement. The key fits very loosely in the mating sleeve.
Replacing the drive-line with A-Line parts is the best option. I have also cobbled together Athearn parts I had on hand or sorted through the boxes of spare driveshaft pieces from other L-L E units, culling the worst offenders and mating up the best fitting ones.
I don’t recall ever finding a cracked gear but I have found plastic bits floating in the grease of some engines that would occasionally cause “thumping”.
In the recent runs, Walthers has gone to a skewed gear train which improves backlash remarkably well:
Walthers_E7-gearcase-near by Edmund, on Flickr
Note, too, that the intermediate gears ride in their own bearings [Y]
Good Luck, Ed
If you can, replace the old bulbs with LED’s. The old Proto 2000 diesels had lights that were pretty dim.
I’m going to add a couple of additional P2K 1990s vintage E8 maintenance questions. I’ve got a few of them, all converted to DCC and LED lighting.
Question 1: All originally had some drive train noise. In all but one, the noise was adequately reduced by cleaning gears, relubing, breaking in, etc. One of them, however, still has gear noise, but different from the original noise of the others. It’s a very low-pitched growling or rumbling sound. It’s not extremely loud, but loud enough I’d never bother adding a sound decoder. And the sound is “bass” enough that I can feel the vibration of it in the benchwork, even about six feet away from the loco. The higher pitched gear noise of the others didn’t do that. I’m stumped as to what’s making that particularly low pitch growl/rumble. It’s currently running with a LokPilot decoder. (And, for what it’s worth, I’ve got a 1990s P2K PA that makes the same very low growl.) Any suggestions as to what to check would be welcome.
Question 2: I’ve replaced the incandescent bulbs with LEDs, the brightness of which looks reasonably prototypical to me. But with the brigher LEDs, light spills out onto the track from the bottom of the loco’s nose. I’ve “solved” the problem by covering up places where the light escapes downward with electrical tape, but I’m wondering if anyone has a better solution.
Thanks very much.
Both of mine make that growling sound. The best I can compare it to is the sound my old Athearn BB F7s make. If there is a reasonable solution I’m all ears.
I had the same experience - deep growling sound and strong vibrations that could be felt feet away from running locomotive. It was not easy to identify all places where noise/vibrations were coming from, but finally, I found two mayor causes: motor and worm shaft bearings. In both cases, play between motor shaft / worm shaft and related bearings was too large. I have replaced motor and created new worm shaft bearings. Video of locomotive before and after motor replacement is
Thanks [:)]