Improvements an Athearn Genesis GP9s

[Schraddel]

Hello!

Sometimes good things came like ketchup out of the bottle. At first a long time nothing comes and then sucessive all together.
So here too, i have searched several years for a GP in Santa Fe zebra stripe livery. By lucky accident i found a pair of Athearn Genesis GP9s in evilbay.de. Both were "buy immediately" and the price was very o.k. Both were sound equipped with OEM Tsnunamis.


They were like new, nothing broken, nothing bend, nothing missing. The only bugbear was the irregular running and lots of stalling of both locos. And the also interrupted sound was not the real McCoy. Not all of the Genesis locos have those problems with current pick up, but often this "mystery" failures are present although the wheels were clean. So here with this locos, one was far worse than the other one.

My improvements:


Remove shell.




Have a look under the hood.




Remove trucks and demount them.





Solder additional wipers. Two locos = four trucks = eight wheelsets = sixteen wheels = sixteen wipers. Getting serial.





One of the trucks of each loco got a special treatment by removing the two moulded on half round pieces.





As replacement on one end of each loco the pivot pin got a package of shims to restore the original height of the half rounds.

As a result both locos run smoothly and now with an uninterrupted sound. One of the failure points may be oil or grease in the axle bearings which have a secondary function of current pick up, causing conductivity interruptions. The additional wipers give a better conductivity. Also the 3-point suspension of the main frame to the trucks will improve a better pick up.

Adjusting CVs and sound is another extensive chapter.

my two cents

Cheers Lutz

edit: misspelling