The drivers on mine were in gauge if on the slightly tight side. The tender wheels were tight enough that I did widen them ever so slightly. It runs great through all my track forward and backward so I am not going to mess with it.
It is amazing to me how elementary faults like wheel gauge and current pick up can be present in any currently produced locomotive If done right at manufacture, neither of these things is rocket science
Well, I finally got mine and took them over to John Widmar to test run on his great layout, since he has one of these locos, too. All three ran beautifully, pulling 20 cars (which is what he happened to have set out) up a grade with power to spare. But there were three spots on the layout where they would stop dead, unless you powered through them at a gazillion miles per hour. Each time a tap to the tender would get them going again. Clearly a pick-up problem, all tender related. When they ran (small detail ), they were all the same: no wobble, no noise, and no fuss at all, just power to spare - what a steam locomotive should be, in other words. To me, that makes it worth tinkering with to get it doing its thing consistently. So before the parts start to fly, I have a stupid question: what is the wiper post?
The drawbar is attached to a split post under the cab on the locomotive. The drawbar has two wire wipers that rub on this post and transfer the power picked up by the drivers back to the PC board in the tender. The four wires running between the tender and locomotive carry power back to the motor and the headlight. The reason for this arrangment is that you get all wheel pickup and a motor isolated from the frame with a DCC ready connection in the tender. When you get a stall that is cured by tapping the tender, you are losing power pickup on the tender wheels (duh!) but the power is not being transferred across the drawbar from the drivers. If that wiper post is not giving clean metal-to-metal contact you will be relying solely on the tender wheels for pickup.
Good comments jwirt, I second your conclusions...the drawbar only provides a link between the negilgible driver pickup and the tender-motor hardwire connection via the pc board in the tender. I believe while contact could be improved from the drivers by using conductive grease, the real fix is replacing the truck wiper to tender pickup. There are four ports lined with plastic through which the truck wipers extend. This contact seems to be a potential problem, and can be improved by adding wire hookups from the wipers to the PC board contacts. I would keep the wipers in the tender intact, since these help provide a little downward tension against the truck wipers. I also noticed the finish on the tires of the tender wheels was very poor, with much scoring and residue on them. I polished them with an abrasive wheel (like the material in a brite boy track cleaner) in my Dremel tool. Don't use a regular grinding wheel, you just need a gentle buffing. I also cleaned the contact drums on the inside edge of each wheel, which were also dirty. Finally, I polished the tips of the tender wipers and cleaned them in alcohol. Adding weight to the tender also helped. With this minor adjustment, they run great. I am working on adding six-axle trucks, and will probably add pickup shoes under each truck for direct contact to each rail. These additions should make it a bulletproof runner. ONe final note, per friend Chris Lane: graphite is a very good conductor, you can make your own conductive grease by adding some powdered graphite (or Kadee greas'em) to your regular lube grease. I will try this after I clean out the factory lubricant to see if it helps at all, but I am not expecting to get much help from the drivers! [ 12. January 2005, 19:14: Message edited by: Warbonnet-Fan ]
Since I have no plans to do DCC, is there any harm in taking the power feed from the drivers and simply attaching them to the motor directly, eliminating the feed to the tender and back?
What about replacing the 2-10-2 tender trucks with Kato caboose trucks. The Kato caboose trucks are far superior to the Con-Cor tender trucks. I'm going to try the Kato caboose trucks on the tender tomorrow. I would try and add at least 1/4 -1/2 gram of weight to the tender between the trucks. I just received my 2-10-2 late this afternoon and haven't had time to tinker with it. The tender is too light and additional weight is needed. The loco itself is heavier than most steamers to date. I also plan on installing a decoder in the tender. A Digitrax DZ 163PS will probably fit the eight pin connection. Stay cool and run steam... [ 13. January 2005, 02:26: Message edited by: Powersteamguy1790 ]
Got mine today, Runs great on my Uni-Track test loop. Haven't gauged the wheels yet. Tomorrow's a slow day (yeah, sure), so maybe I can get a decoder installed and see what it will do on the layout. I have some very "testy" points on the layout. All I got was a parts diagram. That doesn't tell me what decoder I need. Or should I just hardwire in a TCs M1?
Bump for my question: can you take the drive pickup leads and, instead of letting them take power via the drawbar to the tender and back across the drawbar to the motor, simply take them to the motor directly?
