I have two questions for owners of the subject B units: a) when viewing the bottom of the mechanism, does your B unit have an A unit chassis? (evidenced by the corners on one end of the metal frame halves being rounded) b) if the answer to "a" is yes; does the shell on your unit fully seat on that end of the chassis? If your units have the conditions described, I would also be interested in knowing which road names they are. I'm trying to help Intermountain help me with some problem units. Thanks for any feedback. Jack
Answers: a)Mine has an A chassis - front end has rounded corners. b) Yes it appears to fully seat c) ATSF item 69805.
I'll ditto alister's remarks. I have PRR units--ABBA, in different numbers. I haven't really tried to swap shells, but they certainly looked alike when I took them apart for decoder installations.
I special ordered undecs and all 11 are exactly the same except the 6 A units have lights. Other than that, appear identical.
Thanks guys. It appears that in all cases, there is only one mechanism (except for the light board). The CB&Q B units have a problem with the shells seating. So far, IMR hasn't been able to fix them. I'm not sure if I've been getting their best effort....
Is this the same issue as I discussed in an earlier thread when I was working on the close coupling of my IM GN FT units and the seating of the shell on the mechanism? That was an issue of the machine screws not allowing the body shell to completely seat because of the type of head on the screws. It was subsequently addressed with a different type of machine screw in later runs of the FTs and I corrected mine by replacing with a different head profile.
John - This is not the same issue. There have been several versions of Intermountain shells not seating correctly. There was the screw issue you mentioned. We also had reports of the F3 A unit shells not fully seating due to a bad fit between features on the shell and chassis that were supposed to position the shell. In my case, the cause is obvious interference between the "front" of the shell and a coupler mounting pad. I probably could have easily fixed it myself if I had been brave enough to pull the shell off. Unfortunately, my original units disappeared and the replacements that I was sent had not only the shell problems, but others as well. I'm pretty much not happy at this point.
Fixed In the event that anyone out there has been following this and/or has similar issues; I want to let you know that Intermountain has now fixed the situation with my B unit shells. They now seat properly and look and run great with the A units. Despite the inconvenience, it was well worth the effort as these are outstanding units. Intermountain (like all companies) has occasional glitches with their products, but I again consider their customer service to be second to none.
Concur Good to know, Norseman Jack. I concur with IM. I had a similar experience with Micro Trains. Both companies stand behind their product, IMHO.
Intermopuntain is pretty good correcting any problems with any of their loco's or rolling stock. They helped me out with a problem concerning some FT units not too long ago. Stay cool and run steam......
Pete: What color were those Pennsy units? The ones I saw at the LHS were green not DGLE. They looked more like Southern RR units than Pennsy.
