I recently purchased 3 GP9’s (1phII & 2phIII) and 2 GP30’s (phII). They all seem to have gear problems of the same nature. They run fairly smooth in one direction but will stall or act like they miss teeth on a gear in the other. I am hoping someone out their has incountered this problem and has a solution. Thanks.
What brand?[%-)] Your question is like “What food is good?”
It’s in the subject line. HO Proto 2000.
What you have is cracked gears but don’t panic, it’s easy enough to fix. Walther’s will be more than happy to sell you all the replacement wheelsets you need. Axle gears from some Athearn Blue Box locos will also work with no problem. That’s where I get my gears from.
ya no ,I just got a p2k gp7 off ebay and the seller said new old stock but stated it had cracked gears so they encluded athern sd40-2 gears with it ,any way when it arived I want to put the new gears in and check it out well it did not run at all so I opened up the gear covers and removed the wheel sets ,but seen no cracks ,tryed to twist wheels but they were all tite but I could not turn the brass fly wheels there was some type jam in the upper gears ,just kept playing with the fly wheels and the gears w/a little screw driver and bingo it broke loose .put the axels back in an ti runs great…any way the gears they sent me are for an athern sd 40-2 I could get the part # off bag if you need .they look the same as whats in there just gray insted of black…Jerry
to further elaborate and give you some more info…
Lifelike(Proto) did have a problem with early runs of their engines with the axle gears cracking due to shrinage. The easiest way to determine this is to try to rotate each wheel. If it spins by rotating it with your thumb of finger the gear is indeed cracked. If the engine was purchased from a hobby shop and you have a reciept Walthers (the new owners of proto) will send you the replacements for free. If not there is a small charge (something like $3.00) for the replacement wheel gear combo. As was noted earlier, Athearn gears will also fit these units as the truck design is/was borrowed from Athearn. A couple of weeks ago there was a rather lengthy thread on this subject and a gentleman from Walthers posted on it to clear up some confusion. Changing these gear sets is easy. The bottom cover on the trucks is held in place by 4 small tabs. simply pry the cover off with a small screwdriver and the gear/wheel sets will come right out.
Dan Pikulski
Looks like somebody needs to get their eyes checked, lol.[:X] Don’t be discouraged with the cracked gear issue on your Proto GP 9’s and 30’s, once you replace the gear’s with a Walthers “Tune Up Kit”, that’s what they call them you will have fine running loco’s. What I like to do while checking for cracked gears in Proto GP’s, FA1’s etc is take the wheel set out and slightly put pressure on the gear by pulling the wheels towards each other. Do that in a few times and slightly rotate the wheel set each time and you will discover your cracked gear. I have around 30 GP 9’s, 7’s, 18’s and 30’s and a few FA1’s and all of them had cracked gears from the factory. Like a few people said, send Walthers a email and they will send you replacements for free.
that reminds me ,if replaceing with athern gears ,do you just jam axels in till gaged or would you use glue of some sort…this is a athern gear fix not the proto replacement …Jerry
The gears come as a set of wheels with the gear attached to them, there is no need to glue them together. Don’t throw away your cracked gear sets, they make great replacement wheel sets for the cheap plastic ones that come in Athearn dummy’s.
And if you have extra gears, they would look great rusted up in a scrap yard![8D]
If replacing with the Athearn gears, just press-fit the gears to the original wheels and check with an NMRA gauge
Tyler, I like the scap idea. I have a bunch of stuff like that, and several empty gons.