Finally weathered the ol' 2-6-0, using the techniques from Model Railroader a few months back. Problem is that the engine won't start. If I give it a little nudge, it runs. I've cleaned all the paint out of the drive/rod mechanisms, relubed, and cleaned electrical pickups. Everything feels free, and I've run it for about 30 minutes hoping to loosen up whatever. I'm kinda at wit's end. Having only one wit, don't take long to get there. Any suggestions?
Jackson, The rods articulations with paint should not be a problem! That should release and loosen with one wheel revolution.... As for the problems, check all points of electric pick up. Wiring wheel wipers, and where the wipper makes contact with the wheels. and the wheels themself. Cleam then throughly and the wipers, checking soldiered connections and all. Once cleaned an all try to run it again.. This should clear up its running problems! HTH
Have you checked out the tender connections? According to the IHC page, steam models, the 2-6-0 also has electrical pick-up from each rail for both engine & tender..
Thanks for the hints, guys. Last night I did another disassemble, clean and lube. All electrical pickup points work well on the bench. In fact, the dang fool engine seems to run well laying on its back! Lazy, I guess. Anyway, it then ran much better. At very slow speed, it tends to stall when the drive wheels reach a certain orientation. And then only going forward, works great in reverse. I'm still thinking there's some mechanical binding, friction, sticktion, or something. Maybe I should just run it for an hour or so.... - Jack
Jackson, there is a rare thing that might be occuring if this is a new engine. Also it could be a spec of paint. I have run into this a couple of times over the last 20 years or so. You say it runs OK while on its back upside down? Get a magnafying glass and let the engine run as slowly as it will go and carefully watch each drive wheel as it rotates. You may finally see one wheel that seems to raise up or hesitate the "jump" to continue. THAT ONE is the culprit! There is a little play provided in each joint of the rods, and axel bearings, and a tiny amount of play between teeth on the worm and driven gears. One engine it was the driven gear was rotating out of round so that it would bind in the bottom of the teeth of the worm. It may be a bent motor shaft that is banging the worm down into the driven gear. If all that is running smoothly, turn it over on its wheels to continue checking. Try rolling the engine slowly forward until it binds and stop it.! Use a magnifying glass and a tooth pick to very gently move each driving rod link to see if there is one that does NOT have any movement at the end. One of the wheels may be a tiny bit out of quarter set, which would bind it up. Check both sides being careful to not move the engine. I did this by setting my engine on a short piece of track mounted to a board, so I could spin it around easily to check both sides. Another thing could be a speck of paint, or a chip in the cylinder hole that binds the piston rod when it tries to enter the cylinder. Find a number size drill bit to smooth out the hole. Blow out any oil or grease that may be in the hole also. Anu oil trapped in the hole could act like a hydraulic jack and prevent the piston rod from going in far enough. You might be able to see this happen while rolling along slowly. The piston rod will suddenly stop and the engine will try to keep on going, so you would see all the slack go out of the rods and wheels before it stalled. Check both sides. Like John says, you may just have a film of paint that insulates an electrical pickup momentarily. If none of the above works, you may as well send it to John so he can say grace over it for you. Then it will run like a champ!
Ya know Watash, What you just described to Jackson in detail, I've noticed all the older "plain-jane" Bachmanns were like that! With the wheels chatching an stalling the loco at low voltages and slow wheel movement! Here to find it was the axle and wheel centering was in fact out of round, and both were set in the same possition "around the clock" so to speak! The gear, and both driver wheels were out of round to the left (while upside down) I went an ordered a new wheel and gear from Bachmann, and sent the one I had in for a simple replacement, got the new one for the cost of shipping mine and well, the new replacement was the exact same way... Fustrated an ready to file the thing, I had held onto it, and stored it away and after like 2 to 3 years dug it back out, and then did another call to Bachmann to BUY a new geared driver, and got it, installed it. and it still isn't what it should be. being the wheels tight, but it just has a slightly little more friction then it should at the front of the loco when the engineer side is facing me, turned upside down. the driver rod pin facing towards the front it has more friction in that location then any other place (in travel around the driver as it rolls) but it runs a mere heartache better then it did... Now to just get that whinning motor quieted down and it won't run to awfull bad! Then again, what can I say for a regular line Bachmann 2-8-0 that was about $32.99 new, That I payed $12.00 for it so... I got it for less then half the new cost. But it be nice to see Bachmann at least have better machine work done then what was in this one! And I'd bet money that all the other ones thats identical to this one, is the same exact way! So. I bet theirs alot of modelers discusted with them from this fact. But for $32 and being Bachmann what can ya exspect from them... I have to say tho... My Bachmann Spectrum line is a whole sight better! Running, maintenance, even cost isn't bad for it being its quality... And still bearing the Bachmann name on the box! I kinda wish they would retool the Bachmann "Texas" 2-10-4... I'd be having one of those in C&O if it were retooled an all for the Spectrum line!
That's right, we used to have to chuck the driven gear in our lathe and bore the axel hole out and press a bushing in to center it up. We also knurled the axel where the gear would be to prevent it slipping later as the plastic aged. Sometimes we found the gear would crack all the way from the axel to the root of one of the teeth, but was so tiny it was not visable. Those were the early nylon gears. Today the gears are usually a better plastic. High production injected molded gears are only as accurate as the mold base insert the gear is cast from. 10 and 12 year old kids are just not as skilled at mold making in tool steel as adult tool and die makers are. Besides they speak Chinese, so how can you expect them to work with millimeters and read our blueprints and have to work in inches?
Watash, Their just may be some truth to that! HA! It seems thats way anyway with the assemblers to the machinists that made and designed these loco's being sent off in parts to some other cheap labor country, assembled by kids for cents instead of dollars and returned as ready to run (ready to scrap).... I have found a few plastic gears that were nylon that had those cracks you spoke of. They can be headachey in finding being the crack is so fine the naked eye won't see it or even the untrained eye... I have found to look for gears made from Mylar much better then nylon. Its the fact of finding the same size gear with the same amount of teeth as the original! And if possible.... By all means a brass one! I try to use the best I can.. But sometimes the best is less then what I see and feel fit, but you can't always get brass as the best bing brass gearing at times with certain gears isn't reproduced from plastic to brass so... Ya can't always have everything! [ 05. September 2002, 23:37: Message edited by: 7600EM_1 ]
Thanks for the troubleshooting tips, guys. I've isolated the problem to the engineer's side. When the engine binds up, it's the driver rod between the middle and rear wheel. I've had it apart, cleaned and polished, looked at it hard, etc. It's much better, but not quite cured yet.
Great, Jackson, now that you know its probably the center to center distance of the holes in the rod, it can be an easy fix. Run it around to the bind, then gently try to turn that driver one way or the other. One way it will have a bit of slack, the other way none. (This can be several things) Check the other side to determine if the rod on one side seems too short, and the other seems too long at this point of bind. 1. Either this rod is too long or short, and the other rod is OK, or ... 2. This wheel set is out of quarter a bit. 3. This axel slot is diagonal in thier frame. Remove the screw from the wheel holding this rod. Now run the engine, and see if it still binds up. Replace this screw and remove the other screw on the other side. If it runs OK both ways, the wheels are out of quarter, or the slot in the frame is diagonal. (Because the rods are all stamped on a die set, all these rods will be exactly the same, even if they are wrong.) Note... I put a rod on backwards on one side, (by mistake) and had a bind like this, on my first Mantua Mogul. Long story short....I turned this rod around end for end, and solved the problem. I think the Mantua wheel base is equal distance between the middle driver and both the front and rear. It turned out the factory had compensated for a mold error of a few thousandths of an inch, by making the die set punch their rod to fit freely. I wrote in, they sent me a letter asking me to return my engine. They had corrected the problem, sent my engine back assembled with a new frame and rods. They even painted the new parts to match my old ones. They even paid the postage. Mantua was an excellent company until TYCO took over. The IHC engine is not the same Mogul as the Mantua was. The IHC has the rear driver set farther to the rear, so you can't turn the rods around, see? That means, the driver binding is different than the other two pair of drivers. (Remember in school: "Things equal to the same thing are equal to eachother."?) So if the rods work OK on two driver sets, but not on the third, then it must be the third that is the culprit. Before you go hacking and hewing on that rod's hole, stop and think it out! Is the rod only connecting this wheel and the middle wheel, or is this rod one long rod with three holes? If it is one long three hole rod, it is a poorly designed rod, but does save the factory money to make and assemble. Assume it IS the long rod. It can not compensate for one of the axel holes being off center up or down relative to the other two holes, nor can it operate if one of the frame slots is deeper (or less) than the other two slots. To check this out, remove both rods, and align one on the other and put a rod screw through the middle and front hole. Use a magnifying glass and good light to see if the REAR holes align exactly true all around, top one with the bottom one. If the holes align, file a tiny notch across both rods on the side that will be mounted down when on the engine. (You could see it when the engine is up side down). Now turn one rod over and check again. If the rear hole aligns exactly, then both rods are punched with all three holes exactly in a straight line, so would be correctly made. However, if the rear holes do NOT now align, you have found one of the problems, maybe the only problem. Let me know how this comes out. Then we can go from here on how to fix it if the rods are correct. I'll wait, or you can email me. [ 06. September 2002, 14:56: Message edited by: watash ]
Thanks for all the details, Watash. On an IHC 2-6-0, equal spacing between the three drivers, rods are just "two holes." Beginning to think it's a tolerance stack-up problem. On the engineer's side, the binding occurs when the rod connection relative to the axle is at the 3 o'clock position. That seems to imply that the opposite side rod may have too much play, can't pull the trailing driver past 3 o'clock without the bind. One of the mental exercises I keep doing is called "Change analysis." What's different between when it ran well, and now. I painted it (airbrush as described in Model Railroader article.) Didn't run well anymore, so I disassembled rods and drivers for cleaning. Used briteboy to polish all contact surfaces, except holes in rods. Used mouse-tail file to clean them, but didn't file heavily, just trying to remove any paint particles that might be there. Reassembled, but didn't try to keep parts in same location. All four rods have the same IHC part number. At that point, became obvious that there was some binding at one specific driver orientation. Dang fool engine won't bind laying on its back, has to be on the wheels. Anyway, I disassembled and cleaned/polished again over the weekend. Seemed to get some better, i.e. run at slower speed before binding occurs, but not cured yet. Runs better in reverse, binding at much slower speed. Orientation of crank pin to axle is about 4 o'clock when binding in reverse. Interesting puzzle.... thanks, again -Jack
One other thought, I'm not exactly sure if the IHC 2-6-0 has ecentric rods or not, the little rods connectiong to a crank on the main driver that swings the rest that leads back to the top of the steam chest (cylinder), but look at the main driver, the main drive rod connects to it, and then has a ecentric crank on it then the bolt follows this, chech this! He may be your problem, it has to be clocked at 15 degrees to the rear side of the axle on the brakmans side of the loco, and to the front of the axle on the engineers side of the loco at the same 15 degrees. Running this loco upside down, will not show ecentric crank bind, being it makes the wheel thump, and right side up, on rail will really show wheel/rod bind. Check this, I bet this is your problem, give the main drive rod a slight twist to the left or right of the axle, to point the ecentic rod (if it has the ecentrics) and set the ecentric crank back on it being the driver rod pin is filed flat on 2 sides to make a key way type end to run the ecentric crank to motivate the ecentric rods, this may be where the problem lays.... Have a look and see and get back to Watash, or myself!
Finally found it! Wheelset slightly out of quarter. Apparently, they're all off just a bit. I guess what happened was I put one in backwards during the "after paint" cleaning. It was off just enough when backwards to cause the binding. Runs just fine when turned around. Thanks for all the troubleshooting help. -Jack
You are certainly welcome Jack, and of course, WELCOME to the TRAINBOARD! We will be sending you our bill shortly. We accept cash, I.O.U's, personal checks (if written on the North Bank of the Mississippi), arms, legs, and new BRASS engines, take your pick.
