I found out what was wrong and corrected it. I must have gotten a Friday locomotive. The pickups in the trucks were so badly placed that they were making intermittent contact and in some cases were shorting out. I fixed that problem in about 30 minutes. The soldering was very badly done. The wires on the trucks were so poorly soldered that they would come loose with just a gentle tug. 5 minutes of soldering fixed that. Here’s the biggie. The motor is faulty. I’m not sure what’s wrong with it, but it won’t hold a steady RPM. I changed it out with the motor from a John Deere BB F7. The locomotive runs fine now on DC and DCC, no humming, no growling (except a little from the BB motor). The growl sounds quite a bit like a diesel engine. These are problems I would expect to find in a BB locomotive, not a $110 RTR that’s supposed to represent quality. If this had been a Proto 2000, Walther’s would have gotten it back with a strong letter of complaint.
With all this repair work, it has earned itself the title of ‘Honorary Tyco Locomotive’.
I have been on the fence about buying one of those 4400’s but I keep hearing bad things about them. Sorry to hear you had so much trouble. But glad to read you got it all fixed up. Thanks or shareing. Think I will pass. Seems to me that Athearn only made those on Mondays and Fridays.,
Wow, sorry to hear about those troubles, I bought one last year and it was perfect out of the box, runs great. Glad you got it fixed. Are you going to ask Athearn for a new motor ?
I have occasionally found similar issues with the newer Athearn units; I’m posting the following because it especially affects the DCC community.
On two occasions, I found two wires transposed on the DCC type lighting board with the 9 pin JST connector. The black wire (LH track) and gray wire (motor negative) were switched. As a result, if you used the locomotive on DC with the supplied jumper assembly, everything worked fine because the motor negative was direct jumpered to the Left Hand rail. If you installed a decoder, POOF!; it immediately fries the decoder. Once I discovered the problem and rewired the board, everything was fine.
Upon finding this issue the first time, I mentioned it was a Monday or a Friday locomotive. Until the second occurence that is. Both locomotives belonged to two different members of my club.
Carl, you are 100% correct in your advice regarding how to deal with a vendor. Too many people come right in the face of the customer service people, like raging bull in a china shop…this sets a very bad tone for solving any problem.
All people need to do is put themselves into the shoes of the person on the other end of the line, and ask, “how would I respond to some customer yelling and screeming at me”. Any socially well adjusted person knows the right answer to that question.
GreyFox-I just had to take my mother back to the paint store. She started ripping into the employee over a color that SHE picked out that she didn’t like. I felt sorry for the guy.
Loathar: Tsk, tsk, we must speak with mother about this attitude…as you say, and you are so right, you catch more flies with honey then you ever will with water. !! LOL