Given Rapido's once-and-done production run strategy, with few if any extras made above and beyond what was pre-ordered, it's now or never - or forever search the on-line auction site.
I have had a little trouble with my FL9 getting consistent power pickup. After popping out both trucks and putting them back in the stalling got better but it still has issues at low speeds. Is there something I can tweak? No it is not dirty track - my new Kato Lyria engine runs perfectly over the same track.
I too had the same problem with 3 of mine. 2 were DCC/sound units. The first one I had issues with would go through the 7 second start-up sequence then lose power. I took the rear truck off, since it was popped out when I removed the unit from the box originally, and saw the copper pickups were mangled and misaligned. It took me a while to figure out how they should be and compared it with a good running one. How good are you at performing surgery on n scale engines? I endeavored to take it fully apart and addressed the pickups. I was nervous but determined and it worked out in the end. I ended up having to roll out the flat part of the pickups with the shaft of a screwdriver on a flat surface, then rebend them to the proper shape and reinsert them using the front pickups as a guide. Before I did the surgery I had tried to move and bend the pickups both internally and on the truck. The engine ran fine going left hand around the layout but when I tried it going right hand it lost power. I considered contacting Rapido Trains Inc for support. They have the FL9 technical page and you can contact them to see if they will accept it for repair or replacement. I didn't mention this in my original post because I was elated to have them and have gotten used to having to tweak new engines right out of the box (Atlas, Bachmann). I prefer to fix it if I can rather than return it but its a big gamble.
I had the first testrun with my FL9 and it runs fine! Slow, fast, on bad trackwork, the engine passed all the tests. The coaches are beautifull. One of them has a low coupler pin so it stalls on turnouts. I have run them on TTrak modules and those modules have some sharp curves: only the outside curve was possible to use, but the coaches did not like it very much. So, I have to build broader curves on my home layout (unfortunately not an option...) or change the place of the couplers (yeah........).
Awesome! Great news! They really did a super engineering job with adjustments in mind for different layouts. Mine have been running superbly now that I moved out the couplers on one end of each car. If you really needed to you could move out both couplers on each car. Enjoy!
I love mine-F5 doppler whistle effect sounds great as I blast across grade crossings. Love the coaches too.
