hello I have a Railpower products CF7 shell on order for an athearn Blue box F7 i got a few years back (2004 to be precise). I was testing the drivetrain today and found a few things i would like to fix and need advice on. 1. the engine has no slow speed operation, it seems to use alot of power to get moving and when it does move, its doing almost 30 SMPH. Is there a way to make athearns run at slower speeds better? 2. this piticular one sounds like a dremel going around the track, it make a loud grinding sound that come from the motor (i checked, its not coming from the frame or the flywheels, or the gears) is there a way to make the grinding stop? I've never had an athearn (even some of my 30+ year old ones) give me these problems before, and my regular solutions to fix them arn't working. any suggestion? Also, i would like to install constant lighting into the unit, should i use the pwoer from the tracks or a battery and magneting reed setup? Thanks Geep_fan
Geep, The reason a lot of the Athearn's sound like they do is do to flash. This flash can be in the gears in the trucks, in the gears on the half axles or all of the above. The other thing it might be is an unbalanced drive line. you need to put the locos up on rollers and watch them that way. You will never find the problems by running them on a test track. Also check the gears on the half axles for cracking. That will also cause problems. If you are thinking of putting decoders in them, don't. They must be remotored will the lower amp motors. The old Athearn's have 5 amp motors and the newer ones have 1 1/2 amp motors. If you try and put decoders on the old motors you will burn the board and the decoder up. I have about 30 of the older units and I am putting new motors in only 3 right now. I give you all this information for experience. I have burned up over $200.00 in decoders. Shannon
i'll check for flash tommarow. i went and did a careful study, the motor seems to be struggling to move under 1/2 throttle, i think the flash is jamming it. I never intened them for DCC, i'm strictly DC.
You can pull the whole motor out or the worm gears and roll it on the tracks by hand to check the binding of the gears in the trucks. it should roll pretty freely with just a little hesitation from the gears. If it doesnt, then your problem is definitely in the gears in the trucks. If it does roll freely without the noise you heard before, then while you have the worm gears out, take the loco and put it in a vise so the wheels can move freeley. hook up a dc power supply to the motor connections and run the motor at different speeds to check for the noise. If thats where your noise is coming from, then you have a few remedies to work with. You can repower the loco with a can motor, or just do some refining of the athearn motor. Polish the brushes, check and balance the flywheels, look for any wobbling in the shafts also. As for dcc'ing them, I have done over 40 blue box locos with standard decoders and they work fine. I have used Lenz LE1000W hardwired decoders, Lenz gold, NCE D13SRJ's hardwired in, and a few others. I find the NCE D13SRJ decoders to work best for exceptional low speed control, and they offer 4 lighting functions to use for forward, reverse headlights and I usually use the other 2 functions for ditch lights. I try to find the dcc-ready boards that others discard when others do their own dcc work as it simplifies the motor control, lights resistors, and connections to a dcc decoder.
I have alot of athearns and very few of mine have any problems. I'd agree that typically the flashing is the cause of excess noise. Worn/burned brushes and poor connections under the motor(motor to frame) and on the steel contact bar are usually common problems of poor slow speed performance. There is a RC car tool called a "comm stick" made by parma iirc, it's a small fiberglass stick that can be used to polish the commutators on motors. You'll want to heat shrink it so only about 1/8" protrudes from the end so it doesn't fray. I have one and it works excellent for cleaning up a dirty comm and bringing a gimpy loco back to life.
