I have a friend with a number of proto diesels which seem to be noisy in the motor/flywheel area almost screeching. He has checked for and replaced cracked gears before… are there areas which might be under/over lubricated or points of contact which are under the frame?
I have a GP18 also which seems to take a while to warm up and seems to be fairly slow off the mark when starting from cold. Is this normal?
I have three (3) Proto locomotives. Two are GP-30’s and one E-6 A unit. One of my GP-30’s will not stay on the track. I have laid and relaid new track until I’m sure the track is not at fault. I seem to be having trouble with them when they go across Atlas #6 custom line switchwork. I have replaced the switches with brand new switches to no avail. The E-6 is worse. It hit the floor and busted the shell and broke a drive shaft and the plastic swinging coupler extension as well as the light bulb. I have removed about 50 parts from the E-6 including the truck sideframes, brakes, bearing caps, intermediate gears from the rear truck so it is now a six-wheel drive front puller. It still jumps the track everytime it hits a turnout. I have tried to guage to wheels and all seem to be correct. My other locomotives (Model Power, Athearn, AHM, Cox, and Tyco) seem to have no problems with the trackwork. I really like the Proto units for their appearance, but 2 out of 3 duds makes me skeptical about purchasing more.
I have 5 proto engines, 2 GP38, 1 SW9, 1 S2, 1 SD60M and have had no such problems, I also have owned a GP9 from the first run, which i sold. No problems, I must be lucky! but I have heard of cracked gears in their geeps, which is simple to replace.
Some tracking issues can be traced to the clip that holds the truck in place. If the prongs (?) of the clip are too tight against the bolster this will inhibit the truck’s ability to to swing up and down and side to side.
Simply take the clip off and file/sand these prongs until the truck moves freely in all directions. Check frequently so you don’t remove too much and the clip no longer keeps the truck in place.
This solution has solved tracking problems with many Proto locos, some Athearn BB and the Kato SD40-2.
Thankyou for all your quick replies… but are cracked gears all we are looking for when that possibility seems to have been eliminated? Does anybody for example find that the motor end bearings are underlubricated or some aspect of the cast weight gets in the way of the drive train? What I do not want to do is overkill the loco to get it right with lubrication or gear replacements which might be unnecessary! Certainly what has come up is useful stuff and certainly I will keep it in the back of my mind for other issues which might arise… it is all good stuff!!!
Another problem with the P2K engines is they have different gear ratios and that causes a problem mu’ing these units with other brands or other P2K. locomotives…[B)]
Its been reported on other forums that Walther’s will standardize the gear ratio with the future releases of P2K locomotives.[:)]
This was a problem about the time of the release of the GP30 and SD7/9s. I had many conversations w/ Larry Grubb at Lifelike about this. Replacement worm covers were sent to me eventually, but I solved the problem first as modelmaker51 did. Use care when sanding the prongs, too much and the truck can become too loose. I found it better to have one truck slightly looser than the other. This still allowed some stability and stopped any body torquing but allowed the trucks to track over uneven switches or trackwork. I found it best when sanding off material to drag the clip across fine sandpaper with even pressure and in a sweeping arc.
After my E unit hit the floor it sounded like a chainsaw. It was literally that loud. It had broken a drive shaft coupling. Underneath the PC board there are wires that could be misrouted causing them to touch the driveshaft. I have a couple of Bachmann diesels (FT units) that screeched but it was the fuel tanks too low touching the rails. A little sanding of the plastic fuel tank bottom fixed them.
It is also possible that there maybe a flake or two of loose ballast has been sucked into the drive train. I had an Athearn U-boat do this and it made a terrible noise too.