I have a Proto 2000 SD7 B&O 1830. I am looking for manuals for this unit. Would appreciate any help.
With or with out sound? I have a none sound one and there is not much to it. Oh, welcome to the site as well.
Ken
It is the old Proto blue box, no sound. I don’t have it, just the SD9.
Rich
This appears to be one of the earlier runs of the SD7/9. As Ken mentions, there is not much to the unit. It is basically a modified version of the Athearn BB drive.
If this is indeed one of the early blue box Protos, where the body was off the shell, there are a few things to be careful of when working with dismantling.
The shell is held to the chassis by very fraile plastic body extensions. Forget just how many maybe 6 or so. To remove the shell first locate the tab/ latch positions. Some are tricky as they are hidden under the trucks. Remove the couplers and w/ a small screwdriver move the catches to unhook from the frame. Start from one end of the loco and try to keep some removal pressure as you undo the remaining ones. A couple of them don’t go through a slot in the frame and those need extra care. Forcing to hard will bend and break them. Mine were such a tight fit initially when trying to install the shell that I needed to shave the hook of the latch to install. Over the years of periodially getting into my SD’s I have broken a few tabs.
Once inside the loco you will find it to be somewhat straightforward. The weights remove by small phillips, the truck wiring is routed in and around the weights. One of mine didn’t allow enough slack in the wire to clear the weight for removal so removing the wire from the board was nec. This may not be the case w/ yours it was only w/ one of mine- go figure?
My SD7s where from the very first run. I did have some issues w/ the trucks being held quite tightly to the frame bolster. This didn’t allow enough rocking and side yaw of the truck and was causing some derailments on the slightest uneven (level changes of the track). I had contacted lifelike and Larry Grub had explained the fix. The truck is held on w/ a snap on worm cover. 2 fingers extend from the cover to hold the truck to the frame bolster. Apparently the fingers were too tight once snapped on. I fixed this by sanding the nubs of the fingers and constantly checking the tr