Well I finally got tiered of looking at this broken piece of ( add your own adult language here ) and started to fix it. This locomotive has been nothing but a headache ever since I opened the box, and I refuse to send any more money to the manufacture for repair parts, "(more adult language)" them,, I can fix it parts from my own stock.

I grabbed a replacement Micro-Marc motor that I had from a different project and marked some "cut" lines in the two part frame and went Dremel crazy. [attachment=15475]

[attachment=15474]

With the space cut out I gave the new drive a test fit.[attachment=15473] It needs a little more fitting but it should work just fine. My next problem is that I have cut one shaft of the motor short to fit whatever it had come out of. I used a section of black tubing to join it to the fly wheel on the right side of the pic. It dose wobble a lot like this, but it is just a test to see if it will work, I'm sure I can dig up another motor.

What was going wrong with the original motor?

Lutz

Well Lutz the loco started running slow, so I removed the motor to check for a bind in either the front or rear engine (already went through that once with this engine). That is when I heard something loose inside the motor. I gave it a shake and all kinds of little pieces of the brushes and commentator started falling out of it .

From right out of the box this engine has been nothing but trouble. When I first opened it, it was missing a few detail parts. Then the valve gear on one side bound up and basically self destructed. Then one of the eccentrics started to continually fall off the driver. No matter what kind of glue I used nothing would hold it in place, I ended up using a soldering iron to soften the plastic enough that I managed to melted it in place without damaging it or the wheel.. I got real lucky on that repair. The spring on the draw bar would fly out from under the cab if you looked at it to hard, that got fixed with a good crimp and bend from a set of pliers. And there was an intermittent short in the wiring harness from the tender to the engine.

The drive is now smooth, minus the motor . and hopefully that will be the end of this loco's breakdowns.

Sorry to hear about your problem's,sounds like you have a good fix though. That is sad though,looks like a really nice Engine.
Good Luck!
Cheers,
Frank,zstripe

Nothing worse than nagging problems on a new model . You have more patience than I have in that situation .....hope your problems are resolved .

T

e-paw!
That seems to me a common problem with some older Roco motors:

That is an other Roco motor type than, but the ame problem. Have a look onto the commutator.
It was starting with running slower and still slower and then the magical smoke escaped...
The cause were too soft carbon brushes.
They wear rapidly and the gunk of them was collecting into the interstice of the commutator segments. Thus causing a kind of short and the motor was running slow. Simultaneous the temperature rised until the commutator melts down.

Later Roco outfitted their motors with harder carbon brushes and thus solved the problem of short living and melting down.


As it is sometimes difficult to get Roco spare parts in the US, some of the Athearn Genesis Line locos were equipped with Roco Motors:
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That should fit into the 2-8-8-2. This were the revised ones with harder carbon brushes.

My two cents.

Lutz

** It look like you are having fun Steve. C you Saturday.
POP

Hi steve like I said last we spoke. " I have a Sagami 14253-9 can motor. The body is 14mm (9/16") in diameter and 25mm long (15/16"). it is double shafted. shafts are 15mm (19/32") long X 1.5 mm Diameter.
It should fit better.
frank

Schraddel wrote: "It was starting with running slower and still slower and then the magical smoke escaped.

The first rule of electronic/electrical operation is: Never let the smoke out of the components, it's all done with smoke, and when you let it out, it doesn't ever work again.

Sumpter250 Wrote: The first rule of electronic/electrical operation is: Never let the smoke out of the components, it's all done with smoke, and when you let it out, it doesn't ever work again.

My wife and I are both chuckling over that one. She keeps letting the smoke out of her vacuum cleaners. I think the dog hair makes a great smoke stack.
Charlie