Mantua heavy Paciific problem

[Blind Bruce]

I just finished my 21" radious circle test track. My Athearn diesels run good but
the Mantua heavy Pacific with the die cast boiler and the Sagami can motor sounds like the wheels are off the track. The track is code 83 flex laid on cork. Does this loco require code 100 to run quietly?
BB

[orsonroy]

You might have an OLD engine with pizza cutter flanges (not likely; Mantua engines have had RP25 contour drivers since the 1960s), which are hitting the spike heads. The only way to fix that is to get new drivers.

But MAntua engines ARE noisy, and you might just be hearing what's "normal" for a Mantua Pacific. My last layout had Atlas code 83 rail, and my Mantuas ran fine. I've even run them a few times on my new layout, which is mostly Peco code 75, without any issues. I haven't tried them on Micro Engineering code 50 though!

[twhite]

If it's a 'clanking' sound you're getting, you might want to see about lightly oiling the eccentric rods with some LaBelle light oil. I have a newer BLI steamer that sounded as if it were falling apart at first, until I read the directions (duh!) and did some lubrication. Now you can't hear it at all (except for the loco sound, of course).
Tom [:D]

[nfmisso]

Bruce;

Check to make sure all of the screws holding on the rods are tight, this needs to be done regularily, unless you put some Loctite on the screws. As mentioned above, the valve gear requires a tiny bit of oil at each joint. Remove the bottom cover plate, and put a little grease on each axle.

After completing the above, proceed to break-in. Mantua locomotives need a more thorough break in than most recent model, forward and reverse, turning right and left, and going straight (a figure 8 is a good breakin track shape), at varying speeds.

Many Mantua locomotives, such as your Pacific were designed and tooled in the 1940s/early 1950s. They require care appropriate for that area, and if given it will last many decades.

[dknelson]

The rods might be too tight actually, they need some side play. The old technique was to assemble rods and valve gear with bits of paper between the parts, then remove the paper to create slender gaps
Distant memory is that while Mantua improved the tender trucks and drivers of their steam engines with better flanges the lead and trailing trucks still had the old flanges -- which should operate on Code 83 but might hit a plastic spike head now and then

Dave Nelson