SD-70 reliability

[jgfuller]

Any good data out there about SD-70 reliability? Mean time between failure? DC transmission.

[Anonymous]

Well the ones I worked on in Ca. were the SP 9800's and their availability rate was between 96% - 98%. It doesn't get much better than that.

[wabash1]

sd 70 never broke down with one never . cant say that about the dash 8 or 9

[BaltACD]

Supervising territory that uses both EMD and GE high horsepower AC's....my perception is that the SD70's especially the SD70 ACE's are junk. Despite the SD70's being less that 10% of the number of GE's they account for about half the line of road failures.

Hopefully the new owners of EMD can improve the lousy product that GM was selling.

[GP40-2]

Yea, on CSX the GE AC4400's have been a lot more reliable than the junk SD70MAC's.

The new leased SD70ACe's are fairing no better.

That's why CSX put in a order for new GE Evolutions.

[UP_North]

On the UP the SD70m's built in Canada are far more reliable than the ones built in Mexico.

[GP40-2]

Rumor has it that the management at the "new" EMD is going to slash production costs any way it can. So, that probably means the future orders of the SD70 will be made in China[:D] Wonder how they will hold up[:D][:D][:D]

[Randy Stahl]

Seems like mostly EFI problems on the EMD's. GE's get out your notepad !! A GE requires alot more maintenence than the EMD to be sure, paying attention to the service intervals in the GE M.I. is vital. The EMD inverter locomotives are a different story altogether.
Randy

[MichaelSol]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Randy Stahl

Seems like mostly EFI problems on the EMD's. GE's get out your notepad !! A GE requires alot more maintenence than the EMD to be sure, paying attention to the service intervals in the GE M.I. is vital. The EMD inverter locomotives are a different story altogether.
Randy

Hi Randy, as you know, my last contact with railroad motive power was Joes, Boxcabs and SD-40s. Heavy DC electrics and their assistants. I am completely out of date on the new stuff. Could you expound on the above a bit? Inverters -- the inverters I am more recently familiar with are pretty stable and reliable, at 500 kv anyway. What's the EMD story? What's the GE weakness? Best -- Michael Sol

[Anonymous]

my buddys on the UP say the SD70's pull good, decent motors, GE's pull good too, but they are always off line for something...

[UPTRAIN]

I've never seen an SD70M fail out here, can't say the same for SD50's or the GE C40-8 that caught fire at Idalia, MO (just north of Dexter) about a month ago, lol.

[wabash1]

this is going to be a emd / ge war it is a matter of what you want to hear. I am a emd person they load up they dont fall down on a hill and are very reliable. Now ge is just the opposite they wont pull a hill with out loosing most of its speed they wont stay working with out major problems . it takes 3 ge to do the work of 2 emd units and randy can tell you about maintance.

[Anonymous]

Is this post by JG Fuller of the SP/up ???
Virlon