Proto 2000 motor brushes???

[JEREMY CENTANNI]

Since original seem to be made from unobtanium, what are the alternatives?

I acquired a set of DCC set up GP30s in Great Northern for free for my son and we have been going thru and cleaning the decade old since last use grease/oil.

Doing a typical P2k cleanup, chisel out concrete grease, replace wheels due to wearing of nickel silver, gears cracked, LED conversion and the boy wants sound so I'm using SDXH166D decoders(had good luck in my other 30s).

Would love to get some new brushes due to wear though!

[RR_Mel]

Are you sure you need to replace the brushes?  I have many locomotives with hundreds of hours of run time and I’ve never replaced a brush in my 65 years of model railroading.

 

 

Mel

 

Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951

 

My Model Railroad   

http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/

 

Bakersfield, California

 

I'm beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.

 

[gmpullman]

RR_Mel

Are you sure you need to replace the brushes?

I'm siding with Mel, here. I have maybe fifty Proto 1000 and 2000 locomotives along with some newer Proto from Walthers locomotives. Some are nearly twenty years old and many have hundreds of hours of running time. I have never replaced a brush and I have never had a motor failure on any of my Proto locomotives.

If you test the locomotives and the current draw is reasonably low I wouldn't replace the brushes until an obvious problem condition arises.

Good Luck, Ed

[JEREMY CENTANNI]

Only thing I didnt pull apart were the top and bottom motor clips to take the brushes out.

Did clean a massive amount of brush particiles/black carbon from brush area on each engine.   I'll give them a once over and pull them out and see what I have and go from there.

[SeeYou190]

The only locomotive I have ever replaced brushes on was my Athearn Trainmaster which I bought used. The chassis must have had 10,000 hours of run time!

.

I bought it at a train show because it was an undecorated model. I was surpised how much run time and wear it had. Someone must have worn out their Trainmaster and bought an undecorated model and swapped the mechanisms. I got the worn out one. I cleaned it up good, and installed new brushes just because I had them on hand. The orignials were about 50% worn away.

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I probably have another 500 hours on run time on this locomotive, and it still runs great, but it draws 1.2 amps! My power supply can handle it, but those old Athearn mechanism sure could draw the juice.

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I recently bought another shell for it on eBay so I could bring it up to current STRATTON & GILLETTE standards, new herald, etc. It is in final paint work right now.

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Is there any way to date an Athearn mechanism? I would love to know how old this thing is. It has all the old style components, three pole motor, steel flywheels, metal sideframes, etc.

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Any guesses?

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-Kevin

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[Gelatinous Cupcake]

Hi fellas. The whole brush debacle comes up often and there's many people who claim they have run locos for years, hundreds of hours etc and not needing brushes. DC motors fail in following ways 1. armature burn out (typically due to abuse, bad parts out the factory, contamination) 2. bearing/bushing/shaft wear 3. communicator pitting/erosion due to arcing after lots of use 4. brushes Typical life of small DC motors at low rpm and amps (as % of motor max) is 3000 - 9000 hours. To get that many hours however you will need to run it at low constant rpm with little to no load, and clean the communicator often (say every 1000 hours) to keep it from pitting too much. Brushes might be replaced at that time too if needed. Typically actual brushes will tend to crack or wear poorly before they wear out from pure use. They dont usually survive to be "eaten up" by the rotation itself. So when you are saying "i run my loco for 300 hours" keep in mind that this is literally no measure of anything! To toast a dc motor in that many hours you will need to be feeding it max volts, forcing it to work at max amps and spinning it at 98%+ rpm. Hope that helps

[zstripe]

Commutator

Electric

A commutator is a rotary electrical switch in certain types of electric motors and electrical generators that periodically reverses the current direction between the rotor and the external circuit. It consists of a cylinder composed of multiple metal contact segments on the rotating armature of the machine

 

Take Care!

Frank

[gmpullman]

Frank,

Maybe he was refering to keeping the Great Communicator clean?

 

Gelatinous Cupcake

and clean the communicator often

rr-wave by Edmund, on Flickr

I dunno, he looks pretty clean to me 

Cheers, Ed

[mbinsewi]

Gelatinous Cupcake

Hi fellas. The whole brush debacle comes up often and there's many people who claim they have run locos for years, hundreds of hours etc and not needing brushes

I don't remember this topic coming up often, but of all the locos I have run since the mid 80's, I have never replaced brushes, and never felt the need to do so.

I have cleaned the commutators a few times.

Mike

[doctorwayne]

When I changed my layout's era to that of the late '30s, I sold most of my diesels.  A few of them went to an acquaintance in upstate New York, and he mentioned that one of them had quit running.  As I was headed down that way a couple of weeks later, I dropped-in (it was only a hundred miles-or-so out of my way ).  I couldn't find anything obviously wrong with it, but I felt bad about selling anyone a defective item, so bought it back.
After I returned home, I took a more thorough look, and discovered that one of the brushes was missing.  This seemed rather unusual - the loco had been run here, with three others exactly like it, but not excessively (perhaps 2 or 3 hours total operating time).
These were Athearn SW7s, converted to sorta represent GMD SW1200RS models, and all had been remotored with Mashima can motors - great runners and very respectible pullers, too. 
Here's a couple from when I was still running them...

 

 

I had no idea where to find brushes for that motor, although I have made replacement brushes for a couple of small appliances by cutting-down used brushes from starter motors - only the carbon part is needed, as the springs were separate parts in the appliances.

That didn't seem like the best course for such a small motor, though, and after a little thought on it, it occurred to me that the lead (graphite) re-fills for mechanical draughting pencils might work.  I chose from the hardest ones I had on-hand, and while the diameter of it wasn't as large as what it was replacing, it was large enough to be held in place by the spring on the brush cap.  The loco runs just fine now.

Wayne

[zstripe]

Ed.........LOL

Wayne......those are sweet looking engines, even like the color scheme..  

Take Care! 

Frank

[doctorwayne]

Thanks, Frank!

The prototype SW1200RS locos are among my favourites, and I based the paint scheme on that of my hometown favourite proto railroad, the Toronto Hamilton & Buffalo (which didn't own any).  They did run NW2s and SW9s, though, and the latter are fairly similar to the Athearn model. 
Here's SW9 55, acting as a front end helper on a freight heading for Buffalo.  The train is almost at the crest of the grade up the Niagara Escarpment, and the 55 will soon be cut-off at the upcoming passing track.  It'll then return to Hamilton...

NW2 54 better-shows the layout of the colours.  I substituted a custom-mixed green for the prototype's maroon, but mixed a cream colour that's fairly close to that of the real one...

Like the real locomotives, all of the lettering on the bodies of the models is painted.  To do this, I first painted the areas of the body in the appropriate colours I wanted for the lettering, then used dry transfer alphabet sets to act as masking devices, applying the transfers as usual, but not burnishing them in place. 
As soon as the paint (Floquil for these, I think, but Pollyscale worked just as well) was dry to the touch, I used bits of masking tape to dab at the lettering, lifting off the dry transfers to reveal the painted-on lettering beneath.
The two-colour cab numbers used a similar process for each colour...I opted for that somewhat unusual style because I had no heralds for that freelanced roadname.  Even though I have only one of those locos left, they remain among my favourites because they ran- and pulled so well.

Wayne