The pendulum unit is very finicky. They almost never work correctly. It really was an inferior design to the 3 position units Ives and FLyer had at the time. Thats why Lionel replaced it with a modified Ives design in 33. The brass lever locks out the e unit.
As far as working on it, its a matter of taking it out and cleaning it. There is no right or wrong way to do this. It is not for the faint of heart. There is a small nickel sprung contact on the rear of the unit. It must be in absolute perfect alignment to work properly. I would start there. I hate the darn things....I have worked on so many i dont even bother with them anymore.
Good luck!
Yeah, I have 2 levers to work with. One is a small lever that changes the directions of the 402E and the other lever, I have no idea what it does. I tried that lever in different positions and no change in operations. What you think I should do? Maybe the pendulum unit it stuck or something. How do I unstick it and get it to work when I throttle down to change directions from the control panel? Maybe a wire came off. But the 402E works fine in both directions, but has to be switched manually using that small lever by the one motor. Let me know what you think. Thanks.
And I just happen to think; your reverse unit may be switched off. I worked on a Lionel 390E a couple months ago, and the reverse unit could be turned on and off by a small lever in front of the drive wheels.
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Like lionelsoni said, the reverse unit works when the voltage is turned off and then back on. As far as I know, all prewar automatic reverse units are designed to work like this.
The locomotive should reverse when you interrupt the track voltage, which is all that the reversing button on those controllers does.
Bob Nelson
How do you change directions on a Lionel 402E?? Do you use a 66 whistle direction controller or a 167 whistle direction controller?? I have tried it with a 167 controller and that did not work. Would it work with a 66 controller?? This loco has an old Pendulum Reversing unit. Maybe it is sticking. How do I get it to work again? The lever on the Reversing unit does change the loco's directions, but I would like to be able to change directions from my control panel, instead of taking the loco off the track and switching it manually. Any ideas? Thanks.
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