I just bought one of the old athearn rdc-3 units and after much work i got the drive belts on. my problem is when I run it the bands gradually move turning the trucks and yanking the loco of the rails. does anyone no how to fix it.
Try twisting the belts in the other direction.
the problem is that would reverse the direction it goes.
Good Luck! Those belt drive RDCs (I think Athearn called it "Hi F"drive) were real dogs. When they worked properly the RDC ran at about 200 mph! The rubber bands would break, or work themselves up and down the shaft.
I would suggest you look into getting NWSL spud drive and junk the Athearn mechanism.
Guess what... If you reverse both bands and find that it reverses the loco, all you have to do is reverse the polarity of the power to make the engine reverse!
yeah but i run a dc block wired layout. so all locos will get power the same
Ernst made a gear conversion for the RDC that not only slows it down but makes it a smoother runner. They only power one end of the RDC with the kit however I have installed two and they do work well.
thanks it might be worth selling. i thought i was great getting it for 20.00 but it is causing trouble.
Get a P1k RDC3 from trainworld for 15$...
http://trainworld.com/2008_ho_scale.htm
you know nobody really told me how to fix the rdc i have they just said buy a new one. i have no money for a new one. please at least tell me where i can get the conversion kit
http://www.enginetender.com/259m.htm
At $10 for the conversion kit, you would probably be better of buying a new one for a little bit more. The new Proto 1000 ones look and run much better than the old Athearn ones.
Timothy
A P1K RDC goes for around $60.00 or less.
whoa! way too much, looks like a shelf life for my rdc... sigh.
A P1k RDC goes for 15$ on trainworld. The MSRP is 60$, but can be had for much less.
It's not scale length anyway (72'?).
Get the PK1 for 85 feet of RDC for only $5.00 more than the regear kit (if you can find one).
Besides, the regear kit might be pretty advanced... a Proto 2000 RDC would be "out-of-the-box"
And will have more detail!
A few thoughts:
The Proto RDC is a nice model, but over the various production runs the finishes do not al match, some are very silver while other are sort of bronze or gold looking?
The Proto model is only slighly better detailed than the Athearn model.
The Proto model does run nice and depending on what road name and body style you want, can be had at very low prices.
Personally, I have a small fleet of Athearn ones with the regear kits and can motors - I prefer their selectively compressed shorter length. But I will admit, building them to run well with these aftermarket parts was not cheap.
Sheldon
The bronzish gold is meant to represent stainless steel, and is more prototypical than the whitish gray.
Guilford Guy,
That may have been their intent, and you may think it looks more like stainless, but I have seen the real thing, many times, and the simple silver paint looks much closer than either finish on the proto models.
Sheldon
Model the Penn Central. I once saw a former NH RDC pulling into Danbury, Ct. It was several shades of grey. The sides were so grimy that I couldn't make out the little PC worm logo on the side of the car. The orange stripes on the cab ends were a liitle cleaner than the rest of the car. (I have to confess that this was in late February after a snowy, slushy winter so the RDC car was filthy.)