2046 engine gears binding

[bombadil]

 First, thanks for the knowledge sharing, have gotten farther on my own than otherwise would.

I have a recently acquired lionel 2046 engine, knew I would need to tinker...everything is back together engine-wise and am bench testing and track testing.  I notice the intermediate gear is pretty sloppy and seems to be causing some gear binding.  I can test this under power and by hand pushing, it just binds -- and when hand pushing--with not a lot of downward pressure, it will freeze up.

So I am ready to attempt to find an new gear, pretty sure it is 2035-128.  The question is, is this common, and or maybe it is also the gear stud, which from what I read here is pretty impossible to change?  I am hoping the gear, by nature of the softness or hardness of the brass I think, will wear first before the stud?

 Is there anything else I should look for in binding up cases.  Completely cleaned engine commutator, brushes, all axles and gears relubed and greased.

 Also am going to find an e-unit drum and finger set, the drum axle stub on one end in the plates is worn down from misalignment.  The fingers arc a little on the drum and that concerns me too.  Is that normal.  I can see it with the lights down.

 Have never seen this before (have torn down a smooth running 2025--my original train as a tot, a 623 C&O, and a 2033 Erie).

 Any thoughts welcome, thanks, Ozzie

[lionelsoni]

I have both a 2035-128 and a 2035-143.  You can have whichever you want if you don't mind used gears.  These don't seem excessively loose to me.  The -128 is meant for the stud with no shoulder and the -143 for the stud with a shoulder.

(I just noticed that this topic is for now right under the "Lionel extends non-binding offer to Maerklin" topic.  You should be so lucky!...;-)

[bombadil]

 I guess then this pic shows the stud with a shoulder?  You can also see the slop.  If that is not normal then it is the only reason I can see that things bind? 

Will I have to remove two wheels or can it wiggle out by removing only the left wheel?  And is there any way to do this without a wheel puller?

Thanks, Ozzie

[lionelsoni]

No, that doesn't look normal.  The more important question is whether you can get a replacement on with only one wheel removed, since that one will probably come off easily!  If you want to try the gear I have, I'll let you know how many wheels I have to pull.

[bombadil]

By the way, I tried a shim first and did not help this.  I guess if I am going to do this, pulling one or two wheels will not matter.  I also need to order some e-unit fingers and drum and I think the gear is available from the same group...so will not need to bother you.  Thank you for the offer.  The advise on the correct number gear for the gear stud I have helps though.  I have read a lot of posts on pulling wheels, will see how it goes.

[Anonymous]

bombadil

 I guess then this pic shows the stud with a shoulder?  You can also see the slop.  If that is not normal then it is the only reason I can see that things bind? 

Will I have to remove two wheels or can it wiggle out by removing only the left wheel?  And is there any way to do this without a wheel puller?

Thanks, Ozzie

Ozzie,

           From looking at the pic above, the gear isn't the problem. From what I can see, the flanged driver is the plain type, and not the geared type that is supposed to be there. 

[servoguy]

 I just looked at a 2046 that I have, and the flanged driver should have a gear on it.  The idler gear should be trapped between the two drivers and the side of the motor.  It cannot get cocked like your pictures show if the correct drivers are installed and are properly spaced from the side frame of the motor.

Bruce Baker

[lionelsoni]

Good catch!  I was fixated on the intermediate gear and didn't notice the gaping void below it.

[bombadil]

I will take another pic tonight and post, the flanged driver does have a single gear like the middle drive, the perspective of the photo lets the flange cover it up.  It does not trap it though, maybe it might if the gear did not wobble?  Just to make sure I understand that will repost a photo.  My 2025 intermediate gear sits rock solid on the gear stud, so pretty sure that is the problem.

Typo correction from my first post, my C&O swithcher is a 624, not a 623. 

[lionelsoni]

Curiouser and curiouser.  Holding a motor anywhere near the same angle as in the picture, I can clearly see a gear on the flanged driver, and nothing like the expanse of bare axle as in the picture.

[bombadil]

Computer decided not to reboot last night, so dealing with that.  Here is a shot of the back side clearly showing all the main wheels with gears.  The first shot was deceiving in that at that angle...the pin that goes crosswise through the motor frame to connect the smoker platform stubbed out 1/4 inch and was showing right above where the axle was. 

I bought a cheap puller from the auto parts store with nice wide flanges on the tips, ground them down to fit under the wheels, ground the tip to punch out the axle and have disassembled all the wheels.  The have been pulled before, of the three, at least two.  One came off easier than I would like.  Some advise on the board is to replace, some is to wick in some CA on reassembly...any thoughts on this?

 I bought this site unseen from a site, I love to tinker which is why I did not buy a fully refurbished one from our local store here, which is a very nice shop in Dallas and have bought a couple of engines from them years ago....however I did not think I was going to tinker this much.  It is the challenge that is fun though, so I am getting my money's worth. 

The idler or secondary or intermediate gear definitely is rounded out allowing slop...so will definitely look for a new one there, if you guys think I should orders new wheels and or axles, let me know.

I have a lathe and am considering using the old one and setting a brass bushing to fix it that way.  In terms of collectiblity, is that a total no no?  Of course, I plan to keep these till I pass them on to my children, but still?

 Thanks again, Ozzie

[bombadil]

Final update:+

Bought a new gear and installed it, made a major improvement and fixed 75% of the problem.  Repressing the wheels on the axles properly (they were set too wide from previous owner which allowed for a lot of side play) also helped a lot as it kept a tighter tolerance on how much side play the gear had.  Now the engine rolls forward and back (not under power) with no binding...reassembling the siderods, making sure no binding there, actually seemed to improve it (maybe keeps all drive wheels in better alignment?).

Couple of things I found: 1) there were only a few brass axle bushings on the previous setup and those wheels without tended to grab the sides when they touched, contributing to the binding effect, and 2) the siderods did have some bind on the previous setup, when the shoulder eccentric rod overlapped the crosshead on one side-- they used to touch and at slow speed also caused a bind, so I straightened that out. 

Also I noted that the main siderods, because they are magnetic, also grabbed the wheels because of the magnetraction.  I did not see this ever on the parts lists, but I had some brass thrust washers left over so I put those on the magnetic wheels to stop that.  Maybe being too perfectionistic?

Rebuilding the e-unit also stopped problems there.  It now runs as smooth as my very smooth running 2025.  Did find that on reassembly every other Forward did not work, found I had a little slop in repressing the sides of the e-unit together, and could not seem to get it tighter, so simply superglued the main metal crossbar to both sides (not the finger plates or of course the drum) which took out enough of the slop to stop that.

I will now need to rewire the tender as it has some shorting going on which I knew about, very good whistler.

Here she is, it was a journey and my most intensive refurb to date, great satisfaction in finishing it and making it work right!  Makes me want to buy something else.

Thanks for the help.

[Anonymous]

I am glad to hear that you fixed it.  That is a beautiful 2046.  If the side plates of the e unit should loosen again, use a ball peen hammer to flare the ends of crossbar a bit.

[8ntruck]

I have a little bitty 1 or 2 ounce ball peen hammer that is just right resetting small rivest and small sweaged parts on my trains.

 Might pick one up for this sort of work if you don't have one.

[RockIsland52]

Ozzie....the shell on your 2046 liike like it is in exceptional shape.  Nice.

Jack