Marx E-Unit Woes

[JDBoomer]

I have a Marx #666 with e-unit issues. I wanna clean it up real well. what has to be done to get access to the e-unit mech.

[overlandflyer]

almost all Marx locomotives have the same two screws up front that will drop the motor out of the shell.  right up front is the e-unit

aside from no drive rods, this motor out of a KCS diesel should be nearly identical to the #666 motor.  you really can't get anymore access to the e-unit than this.  i know people have had success with tuner cleaner type products that will clean up a sticky unit.

of course, the Marx e-unit has no neutral, only forward and reverse which makes operating sessions fun seeing your train traveling backwards from time to time.  i have had to resort to locking some of the more troublesome units into forward.  while it's in the direction you want to lock, loop a wire tie through that hole just in front of the front drive wheel and secure it up in front of the motor.  this will essentially hold the solenoid from dropping out on a power interruption and prevent any further cycling.

good luck...gary

[8ntruck]

You might want to take a look at all of the solder joints while you have the motor out of the shell.  I've worked on two different #666's that both had smoke unit issues.  Turns out that both of them had bad solder joints on the sire leading to the heating element.  Bad solder joints might also muck up the e-unit operation.

Good Luck.

[overlandflyer]

8ntruck

... I've worked on two different #666's that both had smoke unit issues.  ..

been a while since i've run anything electric and forgot most #666 are smokers.

here is a real #666 motor with smoke unit.  the copper strip on the engineer's side acts as the hot lead distribution with a headlight wire that should be coming out of that group, too.  same standard E-unit, though.  even enough space just in back of the smoke unit to tie off the solenoid as i mentioned previously.

cheers...gary