Greetings all!! Nice board!! Well, like subject says: She's pretty noisy, especially on my 1" x 4" x 8' test track (acts like a soundboard). Is this normal? Perhaps some lube and a little break-in time?? Thanks for any help. She's not sound equipped yet, but taking tsunami decoder out of my new 4-6-0 (runs like a gem) and transplanting into 4-4-0 with upgraded spkr. Thanks again!!
Norm II
Interesting that you brought that up. I was just thinking about one of my locomotives, a non sound equipped Forney. Even with proper break in and lubrication it is still noisy. However it runs like a fine watch and ran beautifully in a recent train show. Despite best efforts, some locomotives just seem born to be noisy.
Jim
Oh well... maybe the upgraded speaker will be loud enough to drown out the gears! ;D I still have to "break-in" and lube (the 4-6-0 ran great out of the box). I wonder if worm gear needs "shimming". Anybody else's 4-4-0 (IF) a little noisy? Put in big order today to "Clinchfield" for a bunch of high end speakers to experiment with, and a new decoder for the 4-6-0. Thanks for answering, maybe we'll get some more comments.
Norm II
Woops... meant "Litchfield", not "Clinchfield"... sorry
Norm II
I agree. My 4 4 0 is also noisy but it runs great. Not real sure how to lube the gears or what I should use to do so. I'm also having trouble with the little bar that connects from the engine to the tender to stay in place and the tender and cars end up being pulled around with the plugs from the tender to the engine. I think that may be too much stress on the plugs.
On the drawbar of all my steam engines I took a small piece of plastic tube or house wire insulation and use it to push on the drawbar shaft to keep them together. Works fine when lifting off the tracks also. You can always remove it later.
Bob
Thanks Bob What a great idea. American igenuity. Thanks for reminding me of the proper word for that. Drawbar. Thanks again.
Good idea indeed! One could use a slice of r/c nitro fuel line or an o-ring to just that also. Well let the little 4-4-0 run for a looong time and seemed to be a lot "quieter". Will clean/lube and check'er out today. Party (loudness) here last night, and "spirits" were high, so couldn't hear much (and probably wouldn't remember what I heard) ;D The noise she made sounds almost like if you were trying to slow the little plastic (is it plastic?) gear on the axle with your finger nail or something. Would be a noisier at certain rpm's and hardly audible at all at other rpms. Like I mentioned earlier, my "test track" is a 1 x 4 piece of pine (8' long) that acts like a soundboard. As a matter of fact, I usually hear the noise coming from somewhere other than the loco. Our "pike" is primarily 2" foam, so that should quiet things down if I don't solve it, but I'm confident I will. Thanks for posting!
Norm
Well the lil 4-4-0 is still quite noisy. Don't know if this is common to these locos or not. "Oldie but goodie" mentions that his is noisy as well. I did drop the gear cover, cleaned, inspected and re-lubed with no change. Don't know if it's a worm to gear interference that could be producing this noise, or maybe I'm hearing an "electrical noise" that just SOUNDS mechanical... Time to dig deeper I suppose. I'm "all ears", to anything anyone can add or suggest. I feel like I hear this noise transmitting through the track louder than the loco itself! I installed tsunami sound in it, and at the right RPM's I hear the noise over the chuffs! Thanks for any help.
Norm
Ive had a few noisy loco's seems like running them backwards for a few hours during break in helps a little for me, and some that I thought had gear noise turned silent after adding a good decoder.
With that tsunami you may be able to tweak it so it goes quieter, I'm just starting to play with these features myself, I had the Decoder guru play with a rail truck I had a tsu1000 hid under a load in back and it runs quieter then before.
NM
P.S. I put the decoder from the rail truck in my Christmas trolley that was noisy and it was still noisy (MOTOR) on DCC, but on DC it runs silent not sure why but even my kids HO Thomas runs quiet on dc with a decoder set for dc running.
I have two identical outside frame Forneys - same stock number - one's noisy, one's quiet. I assume the gears just need a throrough break in to quiet it down.
Thanks NM and LVRR325. Funny, my father also wondered if what we are hearing was "electrical". I truly believe it is mechanical. First of all I can change the noise or even make it go away while it is running on the rollers by putting weight and putting that weight on one side more than the other. Also I changed from the regular Bachmann decoder, to the Backmann tsunami from my 4-6-0 (that is still waiting for it's new tsunami decoder from Litchfield), and it made same noise with both. I also ran for hours on the rollers hoping to quiet her down (after a good clean and lube). May strip her down to paint and weather, and have a look "under the hood". Hope I don't sound to "narrow minded" (sorry) ;D and I'm certainly open to the "electrical noise" theory, I'll let you know anything I find out. Wonder if I can video rec (to demonstrate noise) and post somewhere... haven't done that before.Thanks again!
Norm (PS gonna start another thread. Question about 4-6-0 decoder install, if you can help. Thanks)
if you can try running it on dc and see if the noise changes
You're right! I got an MRC Tech II (or something) hiding in a closet around here... might as well blow the dust off of it. I can safely just set the loco on a dc track?? Didnt know if I had to configure a cv first. Thanks NM.
Norm
Yes you can set it on dc with out changing the cv, and it will do no harm, TSU1000's are dual mode and are made to run on both. As far as CV's go I seem to remember my Tsunami diesle decoder came with the cv set to stop on dc(the sound and lights came on but no forward or reverse) but my Tsunami light steam was already set to run on DC.
All the bachmann decoders I salvaged frome rail trucks and Davenports are dual mode as well run on DC or DCC.
the above also is true for your transplanted tsunami decoder
NM
None of mine will run on DC once they've been run DCC, even the one I didn't change the address on, so you may need to use the DCC control to make them analog enabled again.
Well, just a bit of an update. First of all, got the 4-4-0 with transplant tsunami back together with her new speaker (Hi-bass from QSI), that turned out well. I'll post that under appropriate heading. But she's still noisy as ever!! I hooked up a tech II DC power pack to the track and WHOA... It surely didn't operate "normally"!! It lurched then stopped... then headlight flashed a bunch of times (some kind of code I guess). Throttled up a little more, and without moving, it whistled and started chuffing, a little more and it lurched again... it didn't seem to be hurting it, but I certainly wouldn't want to run it that way. BTW, the loco STILL hasn't been "programmed" with it's own address yet. Anyway, I did manage to run it enough that I can hear same "gear noise/whine/growl". I'm thinking I just got "the lemon". Again... she runs perfectly, just noisy. So noisy in fact, that when showing off her new sound upgrade, my wife didn't seem as impressed with my hard work as she couldn't get over the noise, and very bluntly asked "what's THAT noise".... Oh well. Guess it's time to tear into her further. Plan to paint/weather, so I might as well do it the "right way" and take her apart. Don't know how many old hot-rodders read these forums, but sounds like she's equipped with the ol' muncie "rock-crusher"... remember those?? Ugh. I wonder if I can run this loco with boiler/super structure off (probably not) to check and perhaps adjust gear mesh. I'll probably cut and paste this to some other forums and see what else can be learned. Cheers.
Norm
Sounds like somthing is not wired right, I switch my tsu1000's from dc to Dcc continuosly and I have no problem.
Do you have the cam wipers installed? I had a large scale loco with a tsu one thousand act simular until I set the CV to use the chuff wiper and not the automatic chuff
Hey NM, good to hear from you again. Maybe if I operated or "worked" the tech II throttle some more, things might have smoothed out. I gave like a third of the dials full motion, and "auto whistle" (??) happened, then anything but a smooth throttle up (it took off). Maybe dirty pot in the tech II. No matter, it makes the same noise when moving. Took the loco with me to Timonium Md Scale show, and met with and talked to Mr John Weigel of Peterboro Railroad hobby's (nice gentleman), who walked over to meet Kevin who was operating a narrow guage modular railroad "Sykesville Md" I believe. He promptly invited me to put my loco on their railroad to have a listen! They agreed it wasn't normal, and that it is, more than likely, a problem with the mesh in the gears. Anyway, with all the warranty voiding work I've done, I may as well go through with my plans to look into it further, and maybe learn something in the process. John says that I should be able to operate the loco with the boiler/superstructure off... that should help me when it comes to shimming the motor, making adjustments etc. I didn't install cam and wiper yet, but that would be a good time to do that as well. Thanks again.
Norm
Meant to say "who walked me over to meet Kevin ". Two nice guys willing to help a fellow On30'er out!!
Norm
Somewhere I've read of guys who used to break in the older Athearn HO diesels using some kind of a goop of what I want to say was a tooth polishing compound of some sort, I think it was an over the counter stuff you could buy anywhere, but a couple of steps harsher than toothpaste (maybe it was even meant for use with dentures). Does anyone else remember seeing that? You put the stuff on, ran the engine for a short time (on rollers was fine), then cleaned it thoroughly and put some normal lube in.
In any case, maybe that would resolve this engine's gear noise -
And John is a good guy, I made sure to buy a couple things from him at Springfield MA -
Wow... Most interested to hear more about this method! Sound like it would loosen up a "too tight" fitting gear mesh... neat!!
Norm
Using abrasive creams for breaking in gears works by accelerating the wear on the mating surfaces of the gear, so if the gears don't mesh properly at first, you'll end up wearing the gears out. You should get the mesh adjusted as perfectly as possible before using any break-in cream, so that all you are doing with the cream is a light polishing of the surfaces. You will also have to clean all the abrasive out of the loco once the "break-in" operation is finished, and this is hard to do on plastic gear because the abrasive particles can become embedded in the soft plastic. When I used to race slot cars, the break-in cream method worked OK with steel pinions working brass or aluminum spur gears, but not worth a hoot with brass or steel pinions against nylon (or other plastic) spur gears. My advice would be not to do this except as a very last resort.
Also remember that adding a new decoder or sound board will not fix mechanical problems that cause an engine to run poorly in the first place. If you want to modify or super detail a loco, make sure you make it run as perfectly as you can before investing a lot of time in cosmetics...
Bill