Quote from: plas man on February 22, 2019, 03:47:14 PM
best bet - as any good hobby shop usually has is a oval test track 0/H0/N/Z on a board the size of the 0 scale circle with other scales inwards . Forget rolling road except running in .
as mentioned above a split gear - and its not only older loco's , common on to-days products - if only Bachmann would sort out the problem .

plas man

My nearest hobby shop is about 1.5 hours away.  The do have a test track, and also some slot car tracks setup the same way.

I live in the deep nowhere!

Quote from: WoundedBear on February 21, 2019, 11:18:15 PM
Cool story. Sounds like a whole lot of grief for a 20 buck, used locomotive.

Sid

Yep, that was about exactly what it was, $21.  And if the guy hadn't been such a jerk, and had worked with me to try a couple of things, I would have gave him some sort of partial refund to cover the part, if we could have diagnosed what it was.

I guess that's what I get for selling wrecks.  A local collector had sold me a couple of Spectrum's and Bachmann Plus engines, and threw two wrecks into the lot (two collided at an intersection and derailed).  After testing, just appeared to be cosmetic damage, so I decided to sell them to get a few bucks back.

Hello.  First post here.

I buy and sell train engines from time to time, and I normally just put them on a dyno (roller type with trolleys) and test them.  I run forward and reverse, check electronic functions, and create my descriptions based on what I observe.  Fast and easy.

However, I recently sold an old Bachmann GP50 and the buyer claimed it made a clicking noise in reverse.  Initially he left positive feedback, but then a week later, contacted me to complain.

Is there a chance there can be damage that you won't detect on a dyno, but that will show up if running on rails (or maybe only when loaded)?

In this case, the train had been wrecked, and there was cosmetic damage, as well as an interior light that didn't work after the wreck.  All of this was disclosed, but running on a dyno, it sounded as good as any old 80's Bachmann that I have heard.

Anyway, the buyer was very belligerent.  Immediately accused me of lying to sell a broken train.  I was trying to offer him things to check, like could the bulb have broken and a piece of glass in the gearing be causing the noise? Or could there be a broken bit of plastic in there that in shipping, got into the gearing, but wasn't when I tested.  Part of the damage was to some plastic bits that went into the body, so maybe a small piece fell through the hole to the inside of the body.  Could rough handling in shipping knocked a drive shaft out of whack?  Things like that.  It could be something simple to fix that just requires removing the body for a minute or two.

He also wouldn't tell me anything.  And he wasn't willing to look at anything I suggested.  Wouldn't tell me how loud the clicking was?  What was the situation (engine by itself, pulling a load, etc)?  Then when I told him again that I had tested it and had not heard anything, he got irate and accused me of calling him a liar.  I was trying to help and he just wanted to be a jerk.

So I'm done with him.  But if there is a problem with how I test, or defects that a dyno test might not reveal, I would like to know to improve my process.  I guess I had never stopped to consider the possibility.  Thought the dyno was just as good as running on tracks, and much faster to check. 

Now it does occur to me that if only one truck is driven, the non-powered truck wouldn't actually roll on a dyno, so bent axles or wheel damage might not be heard on the dyno.  Anything else?


Thanks!