Need on-line info source

[baberuth73]

I'm looking for an on-line information source for Lionel locomotives made in the 70's or early 80's. I recently acquired a 8041 from a flea market and it has many problems I need to address.

[brianel027]

Baberuth, it would be helpful to know the problems you have and maybe we here can help. I certainly hope you didn't pay a lot for this if it has many problems. You have a fairly commonplace 2-4-2 steam loco made in 1970-71 by Lionel when it was under the umbrella of General Mills. There were 2 versions of this loco: a cataloged version and another uncataloged version, but they are basically the same loco.

You could go to the Lionel website and at the far right under the navigation bars there's a link for service illustrations and parts. I know there's a breakdown and illustrations for the loco you have. Most parts, if not available from Lionel direct should be available from parts dealers such as The Train Tender or Brasseur's... there are many others too.

General maintenance issues are probably needed: cleaning the wheels, lubrication, checking the motor (replacing the brushes and cleaning the armature surface). The motor is basically the same sort of motor used by postwar Lionel, an open frame AC motor. If you loco has a smoke unit, that will probably need replacing, but that's a readily available part. The reverse unit probably needs cleaning too... an electronic tuner spray as from Radio Shack might do the trick.

But I'm just taking a stab in the dark here. Let us know the problems you think you have and we'll see if we can help.

[baberuth73]

Motor wouldn't run at all. Have done the usual stuff but loco has a couple of soldered spots that have broken plus there is a place in the engine cab that a wire must have gone through to the tender. Not sure about that as I don't have the tender. Someone obviously attempted to work on it before me as all the screw holes in the plastic shell have stress fractures and the trailing wheels are missing. At the worst I'm only out of a couple bucks.

Anyone know what tender goes with this loco? What would the above mentioned wire to the tender be for? Could not obtain this info from Lionel website.