Hi everyone, I recently got my Bachmann spectrum E33 electric engine on ebay. The details are fine, but the humming noise from the motor / gearbox is annoying - I was expecting a quiet, smooth engine from an electric engine. Does anyone have a solution to improve the engine? I tried installing a decoder but the it didn't help much.
Thanks in advance
Chris
Lots of model railroad engines can be noisy for various reasons. I figure you are new to model railroading.
Need more info. Are you running the loco with DC Power Pack, power pack with pulse power or DCC controller? What kind of decoder?
Could be noisy gears maybe motor.
Rich
If you ever fall over in public, pick yourself up and say “sorry it’s been a while since I inhabited a body.” And just walk away.
Chris,The Bachman E33's (or as I like to call them, EF-4's) have a nortoriously loud drive train. It's not just your engine, it's all them. I don't think there's any way to "fix" it without major surgery. What can lesson the noise is breaking the model in. Run it one direction for 30 min. and then the other. Sometimes that helps.Paul A. Cutler III
Some use Pearl Drops on the gears which is a mild abrasive that helps smoothing out the teeth on the gears. Clean the gears after running the loco in both directions for maybe fifteen minutes. Don't remember how long some have done this before cleaning of the paste and re-lubing the gears.
I use LaBelle 102 gear oil but many are switching to Aerocar ACT-111 gear grease and like it better. Seems to be quieter.
No idea if the idea will help this loco any but might be a possibility.
Try a Google search for pearl drops on locomotive gears
These locomotives do have a little bit of a rumble, but it goes away somewhat after a while of operating them. At the very least, it won't sound so loud.
The important thing is that nothing is actually wrong with it. Look at it this way, you got free sound for your locomotive!
Modeling Conrail, Amtrak and NJ DOT under the wires in New Jersey, July 1979.
Proper lubrication is probably necessary, especially since you got it off eBay -- it may be bone dry and need oiling.
If someone got a bone dry Bachmann E33 it would be a first. The one I had was so over-greased there was a puddle in the plastic wrapper under the trucks. Even after cleaning it out and cleaning up the gears, the next time I got it out - another puddle of grease. Luckily it didn;t get on the shell and ruin the paint.
I don;t recall it being particularly noisy, but I put a DCC decoder in it right away and it was a smooth runner. Apart from the over-greased state, the only real beef I had with it was the bluish-white LEDs used for the headlights, I was about to replace them with golden-white ones.
If this one is DCC equipped with Bachmann's decoder, there would eb the problem, the cheapy Bachmann decoder is not a high frequency silent runnign type, and can and does cause motors to buzz, some worse than others.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.