Randy, David and others,
A sincere thanks for the detailed comments on the Athearn RS3. Those bronze bushings will fall out of the stamped side frames. The gears can also crack like a P2K and the guage will change.
These are some of the best RS3's from a detail and finnishing standpoint. I have 5 of them, one that runs great, one that runs so so and 3 that are on the repair track because they do not run.
Thanks, Chris
Almost every loco I own was purchased 'used' (even though some were still sealed in the box) as I get mine on ebay or at train shows. What David described is what I called 'phase 1' - one side of the trucks ARE wired to the circuit board but the wire is rather stiff and has like 5 strands in it. The other side passes power via the truck bolster and into the frame. On that side I soldered a piece of decoder wire to the brass rivet and ran it to the circuit board. I also trashed the plastic clips and soldered the wires in the holes on the board. On my first RS-3 this made it go from not runnign at all without constant pushign to it runs but the lights still flicker indicating poor pickup. Next phase was to adjust the plastic part of the truck vs the metal plates so that the bronze bushigns make firm contact witht he metal plates rather than ride on the plastic part of the trucks. In between I got a second one that ran great right out of the box so I just swapped shells. If I REALLY need more RS-3's I have that shell I vould strip and repaint, plus I have a spare Atlas shell. I have 3 other complete Atlas undecorated units as well as an MDC with the P2K drive under it so refinishing the oddball Athearn shell and repainting it and fixing that chasiss is about as low on my priority list as I can make it. I may just fix up the chassis and sell the thing as is - I don't even remember the road name, might be SOO.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
With all do respect to those members who have offered some sound repair advice the thing you should do is contact Athearn customer service department. It's a fact that many if not all of the first generation Genesis locomotives not restricted to just the RS models had bad power trucks. I had the unfortunate luck to have purchase 5 of them. 4 FA units and 1 RS3 . All of the locos in question were repaired by Athearn at no charge to me what so ever. They even covered the postage. The fix was replacing the old style power trucks with the new generation models. To date I have yet to have a problem with any of them. On one of the F units they even replaced the sound decoder that was a box stock MRC unit with a Tsunami. When I called them up to inquire and to much more thank them the tech told me they considered it their fault that the decoder had fried. I asked how so he told me well when a customer sends you five locomotives all having the same complaint and you check 4 out of the five and each one has the same bad power truck issue there really is no need to check the 5th one before you work on it. Besides we can tell which ones have the bad trucks by the serial number on the box.
So if I were you I would at least make a phone call to Athearn and I would be extremely surprised if they refused to make good on your loco. The only scenario I could imagine is if it were purchased used.
thanks again , i did some searching thru this forum and have see enough Athearn problems for these old eyes. I have been in Nscale for 30 some years and have had to wire Nscale engines together to get them to run good, this was b4 they had flywheels. But you would think with all the years Athearn has been around this problem should nit exist.. I am going to take the advice here , tear it apart and basically wire around the frame. And buy the way , buy Atlas and InterMountian and Proto2000, expensive , but good stuff.. Oh , this DCC stuff is cool!!
I go back to the old BB Athearns. There was always tweaks and tuneups needed to get them to run reliably. First is to strip down the trucks and remove the flash and the 2 quarts of oil out of them. On some you may have to shim the bronze bearings away from the gear axle to contact the metal frame. Attach a wire to the side frames. Shim the worm gears in the towers to restrict fore and aft movement. Clip half the brush springs off and toss out the old metal bar that was used for the upper brush to truck pickup. Please do not rely on the frame for electrical conductivity.
Pete
I pray every day I break even, Cause I can really use the money!
I started with nothing and still have most of it left!
Hey thanks for the info , i sorta suspected these replys , maybe that why Athearn costs $79 and Atlas $120. Oh well , it looks nice sitting there
Search the forum, right in this section there was a lengthy discusison. Bottom line is they have questionable pickup and it seems the quality control is spotty. I did all but the filing step to my first one and it was improeved but the lights still clickered on a single piece of flex track wired right to my DCC system. I picked up a second one for $25 on ebay (guess no one wants them, plus this was an odd road name) and it ran perfectly right out of the box.
The problem is that it is an Athearn RS 3! I have one as well and it is notoriously bad in the power pick-up department. I have seen several others with the same problem as well.
The solution that I have been given is to solder wires to the trucks to avoid using the frame as a power distributor.
But I have seen threads regarding this very problem before, and there thay even recommend making sure that the bearing blocks are in contact with the metal plates.
See what you can find.
Swedish Custom painter and model maker. My Website:
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this RS3 is DCC ready , so all i had to do to make it DCC was plug in the decoder. when it started having problems i went back to DC. I have heard that small problems like this in DC become bigger in DCC.
Have you isolated the motor from the frame? If you say it ran better through DC then it could be that you haven't isolated it for DCC.
Modeling New Haven despite what his user name says...
I have a 3 month old HO Athearn RS3 that has a TCS decoder in it. The problem is the engine will just totally stop for an instant , maybe 1/2 second at the longest , then start again, The lights also go off,, Sounding like a pick up problem , i cleaned the track and wheels , same thing . I checked and resoldered the wires from the trucks.. After experimenting a bit I think the problem is in the connections on the side of the pickup that is connected to the frame.. ( I took the decoder out and it runs better in DC , but the lights still flicker).. being a life long Nscaler this is my 1st run in with Athearns. I can't figure out how the pickup gets to the motor thru the frame. Any help would be great.
Thanks in Advance