QUOTE: Originally posted by cacole I'm beginning to have serious doubts about ever purchasing any more Athearn locomotives. Their quality control is really bad, and they don't have parts for any of their Chinese made locomotives.
QUOTE: Originally posted by Pennsy58 I have two tunnel motors. One has worked fine ... It runs fine on DC, no problems. With a decoder plugged in it just sits there with the front headlamp on with No control including turning the lights on or off. I tried a different decoder and same thing... The other possibility I can think of is ...
QUOTE: Originally posted by cacole I had problems with one because the electrical pickup wipers on the rear truck had such a thick coating of enamel on them that it was electrically dead. For some reason, the motor would run on DC, but not on DCC, until I disassembled the truck and scraped the enamel off of the wipers. This is the third Athearn product I have had problems with out of the last five I have bought. Two out of four Genesis SD70s have problems with warped trucks that cause them to continually derail, and now the SD45T-2 electrical wipers. I'm beginning to have serious doubts about ever purchasing any more Athearn locomotives. Their quality control is really bad, and they don't have parts for any of their Chinese made locomotives.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
I purchased an Athearn R-T-R SD45-T2 to run on DC. The unit would make a vibrating sound as if there were some kind of electrical resistance. This sound would increase as voltage was added. It would hold the locomotive back from converting to motion until a higher than normal voltage was applied at which point the unit would then jump to speed. In motion, the vibrating noise became worse. When I put my fingers on the shell sides the vibration was much stronger than anything I had ever enountered in many years of rebuilding locomotives. I returned the unit to the LHS where I purchased it and was given another one (identical) in exchange. This one did the same thing only worse. I grew up in the Blue Box era when working on units was easy and so I chose to completely diassemble the unit and get to the bottom of it. I quickly narrowed the problem down to the motor itself. With gater clips attached to the motor assembly (which I had removed with the flywheels still on the shaft) the vibration was such that it moved its way across the work bench and I had to stop it from going over the edge. Knowing the motor was the problem (the armature was not bent as far as I could tell) I set out to remove the flywheels (or at least one of them) with the thought of checking out the armature and magnet placement attitudes. This was a fleating thought brought to an abrupt end when I realized the flywheels are fairly secured to the armature axle. Not having the correct tools to overcome this I set out to find an "in stock" replacement for the entire assembly. Unfortunately, no other Athearn motor I had would work as they all had the older style flywheel set-ups. Some Blue Box motors were identical to the R-T-R motor but the new R-T-R flywheels and shaft assembly would have been difficult to swap out and fit on to a Blue Box armature shaft. Chances are good that even if I had been able to access the R-T-R motor I would have discovered that the flaw was non-correctible anyway. Strangely enough I was able to continue running the locomotive and greatly reduce the vibrating by loosening the motor mount screws several turns. This results in the motor assembly doing some serious rocking. Until I secure a new replacement motor and assembly I get a kick out of running this unit for visitors and fellow modelers who comment on how smooth and responsive the unit is. It now starts at low voltage and the vibrating is audibly reduced. I then remove the shell to reveal the motor shifting and rocking wildly when power is applied or the direction is reversed. Crazy!
For the Athearn RTR GP60Ms and GP60Bs, there was a bulletin that addressed an issue similar to this. The bottom motor clip contacted the frame. On DC, this wouldn't be an issue, but if you installed a DCC decoder, the locomotive would not operate. To fix the issue, Athearn instructed owners to bend the clip so it wouldn't contact the frame. Your locomotive might have the same problem. Here is the link to the bulletin which has pictures: http://www.athearn.com/ProdInfo/Files/Athearn-GP60M-DCC-Bulletin.pdf
tar1962 I purchased an Athearn R-T-R SD45-T2 to run on DC. The unit would make a vibrating sound as if there were some kind of electrical resistance. This sound would increase as voltage was added. It would hold the locomotive back from converting to motion until a higher than normal voltage was applied at which point the unit would then jump to speed. In motion, the vibrating noise became worse. When I put my fingers on the shell sides the vibration was much stronger than anything I had ever enountered in many years of rebuilding locomotives. I returned the unit to the LHS where I purchased it and was given another one (identical) in exchange. This one did the same thing only worse. I grew up in the Blue Box era when working on units was easy and so I chose to completely diassemble the unit and get to the bottom of it. I quickly narrowed the problem down to the motor itself. With gater clips attached to the motor assembly (which I had removed with the flywheels still on the shaft) the vibration was such that it moved its way across the work bench and I had to stop it from going over the edge. Knowing the motor was the problem (the armature was not bent as far as I could tell) I set out to remove the flywheels (or at least one of them) with the thought of checking out the armature and magnet placement attitudes. This was a fleating thought brought to an abrupt end when I realized the flywheels are fairly secured to the armature axle. Not having the correct tools to overcome this I set out to find an "in stock" replacement for the entire assembly. Unfortunately, no other Athearn motor I had would work as they all had the older style flywheel set-ups. Some Blue Box motors were identical to the R-T-R motor but the new R-T-R flywheels and shaft assembly would have been difficult to swap out and fit on to a Blue Box armature shaft. Chances are good that even if I had been able to access the R-T-R motor I would have discovered that the flaw was non-correctible anyway. Strangely enough I was able to continue running the locomotive and greatly reduce the vibrating by loosening the motor mount screws several turns. This results in the motor assembly doing some serious rocking. Until I secure a new replacement motor and assembly I get a kick out of running this unit for visitors and fellow modelers who comment on how smooth and responsive the unit is. It now starts at low voltage and the vibrating is audibly reduced. I then remove the shell to reveal the motor shifting and rocking wildly when power is applied or the direction is reversed. Crazy!
Athearn offers a genesis motor upgrade for the new SD40/45s. You can buy a new frame for the older RTR SD45s. The cheaper route would be to get a replacement RTR motor which are due mid June.
Athearn has parts on their website: http://www.athearn.com/Search/Default.aspx?CatId=THCR