I just bought my 4th Alco of this vintage. First 3 were easy to fix. This one is giving me trouble. I did my basic clean and lube of "all new to me" locomotives and got it to run forward decently except for lots of sparks flying from the contact rollers. Cleaned the rollers good with CRC contact cleaner and 2-26 lube. still flying, but thats a small issue.
When going in reverse a few feet, the loco will stall, sometimes its in neutral, but more often its still in reverse and it may start to inch backwards, stop, go backwards again. A stop / start condition. Raising the voltage may get it to move, but not always. Pushing it also helps, sometimes. Best is to go forward again and then it may run backwards for 3 or 4 feet before stopping.
The wheels turn by hand with the same effort both forwards and backwards. I dont see a significant up and down motion of the motor staft when going forward and reverse by hand. Its slight but if a thrust washer was missing I would think it would move more. The one flaw I did notice is one of the intermediate gears has a broken tooth, but it doesnt seem to bother it when I rotate it by hand.
Any ideas to get it running would be appreciated.
I just want to use this loco as a slave to run two powered Alcos together to pull a train.
Clean the commutator & slots, and the brushes & brush tubes.
Rob
Thanks Rob
I did that but I'll do it again. Maybe just not clean enough. I didnt have some of my standard tools with me so I will improvise. Brushes and springs did look good though.
What does e unit look like? Might have dirty contacts or a loose wire? Did you use the contacts on it?
Swap the brush leads to isolate the problem - same issue means it's the motor, forward intermittent means it's electrical(E-Unit).
Thanks for the diagnostic ideas.
I did a better job of cleaning the e unit, and got a lot of black residual out, along with seeing that 2 of the contacts are bent. Looks like they still contact but are close together, twisted slightly, and maybe the force to the drum is reduced, thus why it stalls at lower voltage. tried to do some bending back, but I dont think it changed. Cleaned the brushes, comm and tubes again
Also swapped the brush leads but that didnt seem to make any difference, ran forward fine, and it got better backwards. And it ran good each direction when I locked out the E unit. Problem solved I thought since this was to be a slave. It even ran good for quite a bit of time in both directions with the E Unit. Maybe 15 minutes total each direction. It would crawl at 7V, stall at 6-6.5V, and run fine at 8V and above. Is this normal?
But alas, it started acting up again in both directions in the 027 curved section of the track. Dead stop. Both brushes had track voltage to them when using a multimeter and track rail as ground. Seems like this is telling me the motor is losing ground in the turns? Any ideas on how to check this? or ground the motor?
Bob
Just out of curiosity, do the brushes travel freely in the brush tubes? It could be that one or both of them bind a little bit, and it's just enough to cause poor contact. Other than that, I'd think to double check all the wiring and stuff but it sounds like you squared away all the usual culprits. It can't hurt to remove the E-Unit from the circuit entirely, and wire it both to 'forward only' and 'reverse only' and see how it runs for an extended period of time. I wouldn't be shocked if the E-Unit turns out to be the culprit. Especially since the behavior changed after tinkering with the E-Unit, without taking it apart. I've often found the most reliable way to sort out a misbehaving E-Unit is to pop it open and clean up/replace whatever's acting up.Anyhow, that's just my thoughts, I'm not the one with the loco in front of me!Good luck, eager to hear more of your progress.-Ellie
"Unless bought from a known and trusted dealer who can vouch otherwise, assume every train for sale requires servicing before use"
I don't have any 2000 series Alcos, nor have I worked on any, so the following comments are general Lionel type knowledge.
If you have voltage between the brushes and the outside rail, you might have a ground issue. The ground path on Lionel diesels is generally motor to truck, then truck to wheel.
On the 200 series Alcos and the switchers, there is a ground lug that bolts to the motor frame and is usually connected to the field coil wire. I'll assume that there is a similar arrangement on your locomotive. Maybe check that connection, both soldered joint to the field wire and the mechanical connection to the motor frame. A cleaning and relubing of the axle bearings might help as well. Cleaning the running surfaces of the wheels may help, too.
Good luck, and have fun.
The brushes do move freely. I think the E unit was part of the original cuprit and tinkering and cleaning helped it. But with the E unit out of the equation, I still had stutter and dead stop, leading to the conclusion of motor not grounded. There is no ground wire, so the motor needs to be grounded through mounting. Before adding a ground strap, I took the motor out and cleaned the surfaces and remounted it. It now runs great for the last two days. (well as good as a beater loco can) It runs better backwards, so thats how I will run it as a slave when I pair it with one that does about the same speed.
Thanks for all the suggestions
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