I have an Athearn P42 that I aquired a little over a year ago. The motor is not performing properly. I have rebuilt it and it doesn't seem to help. I am looking at replacing it with a can motor from A-Line.
I have a few questions.
Do the Athearn flywheels and the A-Line flywheels match? The Athearn is hex drive.
What is the motor shaft size?
How hard is it to remove the flywheels for the old motor?
Does the can motor need any precautions taken for DCC?
Thanks in advance.
Will
Unless the A-Line kit is for newer Athearns, I don't think the shafts will match up. The older Blue Box locos tha thte A-Line kits were for in the apst did NOT have a hex universal, that is one of the improvements in the Genesis and now RTR line.
The motor will work just fine on DCC, it's not a coreless can motor. Even if it was, it would be perfectly safe with any modern decoder that has high frequency drive.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
PPW-aline has a website data page with the dimensions of their parts, http://www.ppw-aline.com/re-power.htm. Depending on the motor, their shaft sizes are between 1.5 and 3 mm.
If you scroll down to the miscellaneous parts list, you'll see that they have a part #1205 brass sleeve that has a 2 mm ID and a 3/32 OD. I think that this is to allow you to use your existing Athearn flywheel on the new PPW motor. But you'd need to check the diameter of your existing motor shaft to confirm this. If you can use your existing flywheel, that should accomplish what you want to do.
I would send an email to the Athearn service dept. I have done this recently due to unbalanced hex flywheels and the motors were replaced at no charge.