A fiew questions about mtl vs marklin f7. 1. Who has best power pickup? 2. Wich is the best slow runner?? 3. Who needs moust mantenance??
As much as it hurts me to say this, because I've always had a soft spot for the MT's, The marklins are better out of the box. They are easier to get running and keep running. Both locs require the same periodic lube and cleaning, but for major maintenence and thorogh cleaning, the Marklins are much easier to disassemble ane reassemble. Some of the Marklin's traction problems can be solved by fitting electrically insulated weights inside the shell, above and behind the chassis/circuit board. I may be alone on this, but I have had much better luck getting older MT's to run well. I don't know if it is because the tooling is wearing out, or what, but the few new ones that I have bought have taken a lot of work and part swapping to get them to perform as well as my old ones. Dan S.
There are many people who disagree, but the way I see it is, the MTL F7 looks the best, but is a real dog, in fact such a dog, that I DCC'd 4 of them in the past week, and 2 of them are already hosed up. They were all running sweet yesterday, but one is totally dead today, and the other has lost electrical pickup to the point of being an 0-5-0 operating loco. They sound terrible, and wobble horribly. What a dog! The Marklin don't look right shell wise, and it's measurements are way off, but it runs sweet and slow, has decent electrical pickup, and runs 20 hours between service.
There is pretty much an agreement here and I am included. While the Marklins are less accurate, have much less pulling power but have better electrical pickup, they run all day, easily. But they can't pull more than 6-8 cars without slipping on even the slightest of grades. Adding weights helps but it is no where near the tiger that the MTL F7 is. It will run over your finger. As for cleaning, 22 seconds, the Marklin is apart - totally. It is an amazingly simply design. As for DCC, it's a brainer in the Marklin but a several hour project in the MTL (designed during the early years of DCC and obviuosly nothing available for Z scale at that time). One thing that concerns me is the F7B unit (dummy) has so much drag in it, requiring lots of tweaks for nothing but the trucks! The same are used in the A units but the motor is so powerful, it seemingly gets over this. If I had to pick and choose, the MTL. But it sure would be nice to get another passenger diesel from either. My bet is MTL will do it before Marklin but not for at least another year.
Hmmmm... I am considering to sell my Marklin f7`s because of the ugly look and beacause it need`s so much mantenance...But in my eyes now, i may just stick with them.. ?!
I noticed lots of people on the Yahoo list think the MTL is better. I have only been in Z Scale for a little more than 3 years, and all the MTL locos I have bought were dogs, but I seen a 10 year old one at the GTE show that ran beautifully. Now I hear more and more that the newer ones, produced in the past few years, are the bad ones. I never see old MTL F7's selling on ebay either.
I would agree that older MTL F7's run much better than newer ones. When bryan get's around to posting on this, he'll tell you that even a newer F7 reworked by Glen Chenier runs better than just about anything out there. As for the Maerklin F7, if you call it an FP7 instead, add a vertical frame in the side windows and rework the pilot, I suppose it would be good. I've seen Maerklin "F7's melt down after extended running of a few hours and I've seen MTL F7's run for two days straight with no problems. I would say the MTL's are better, but on a case by case basis need to be tweaked (some quite a bit). I know Joe D'Amato has talked about wanting to redo the MTL F7's, but until the molds actually break, I doubt this will happen. Randy
I don't know much of anything about the Marklin's except that they look nothing like a F7 and the trucks aren't right either. They used an existing locomotive and just changed the side frames and shell. That is why none of the dimensions are right. I like my 2 MT F7's. I wish the A was as crisp as the B. I haven't ran them enough to know how they hold up. Mine wobbled and tilted to one side. I took them apart and tweaked the wipers inside and all is well now. They run nice and slow, I was surprised how nice they ran the first time. They are a bit loud, but I never group that with how they run. They can be loud and run smooth, they could be quiet and run like crap. So for me anyways there is no competition since the MT is the only version I would even consider. Marklin's could run better, but there's no pretty face.
