that "would have helped, but i tore the commuter off the motor trying to get off a flywheel.

i would guess that would have fixed it. everything looked very good. i did take some 400 grit to the commuter & polished it real good, & that didn't help at all. but what you say makes sense. that's about all that could put resistance on it more in one direction that the other. one question though, whats a typing eraser?

i took the motor out last night & it would run faster one way than the other out of the frame. i took it apart, cleaned & lubed it & it still did it. i never seen anything wrong with it. i put another athearn motor in it & she runs fine now. it was a bad motor i guess.

if i was you i would take the track, engine, & your transformer to your hobby store & show him what it's doing. that would be your best bet.

it's an old blue box kit. neither the wheels or motor commuter had any signs of usage. i hard wire all my athearn engines, just haven't done this one yet. I'll break it open & pull the motor & check it first before going any further. if it runs fine out of the frame I'll clean & lube everything, hard wire it, & try it again. I'll check the worm gear covers as well. thanks, Jerry

i bought a brand new blue box athearn sd40-2 powered engine a few days back. i put it on the track today just to check it out & it runs faster forward that it does in reverse. what would cause this? i've never had an athearn do that. are there any fix's?

I'm compairing it to my athearn & a couple of bachmann sd45's i have that are about 5 years old. after i greased it, it did seem to improve. i don't know why though, it was greased pretty well before i did anything to it. it will pull 10 cars pretty easy now. i just wish it was a little faster & i wished they would have put flywheels on it. to me not putting flywheels on it is just being cheap!

i greased it up today just to see if thet would help, & it did seem to help some. i run my trains pretty quick, maybe it just seems slow compaired to some of my other engines. the engine is fairly heavy so it should pull pretty good, but it doesn't. it doesn't spin the wheels either, just boggs the motor down.

it is nicely detailed & painted for the money.

has anyone tried using the TRUCK TUNER on old tyco/bachmann car trucks? i've cut all the talgo truck couplers off & installed kadee couplers, now i'm wanting to put metal wheels on the factory tyco/bachmann trucks. unless i can buy trucks cheap (real cheap).

hi everyone, first post.

i have a few questions about a bachmann sd40-2 dcc equipped engine. first of all i don't use dcc, i use standard dc. the problem I'm having is it is slow. even at wide open throttle it might do 30-35 scale mph. on top of that it's not a good puller at all.

is this commen with these engines? or does it have to do with the fact I'm using it with standard dc? if i took the factory dcc board out, would it run more like i want? i have a feeling the board is sucking up the power, but i don't know. this is the only dcc engine i have & i don't know much about them.

thanks, nitro