Yeah an interesting area of packaging design... now involved in passively cooled 10 gigabit switches, and those lasers in the fiber optic transceivers are tough to cool!

fans are easy when you start to conductively cool stuff never designed for that method of cooling.

(the video does not show the "secret sauce" of cooling)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zXA1bh4dLI

Actually, direction does matter... in some use cases...

so sucking in air is preferred, because if the smoke unit is used and you have the fan "exhausting" people have reported it pulls the smoke into the loco, not out the stack.

other than that then normal electronic cooling rules are in order, and then you should be exhausting air, but the difference here is small.

if you look at modern electronics, a fan mounted to the case will be exhausting, pulling hot air out along with any heat from the fan itself... but in this case the fan's heat is minimal..

But, in the very specific case of this loco, the most important thing is as wraujr stated (sort of) just a bit of airflow over the "hot" device makes the most difference..

Spent a number of years with real products (a small company called Hewlett Packard) in the 70's when we really started looking at what the heck the fan was doing...

so, will you use smoke? then the choice is easy..

Should be no issue, I see that the motor is geared to both axles in each truck.

You should be able to get the PDF files of the exploded diagrams here, if not email me.

Greg

Fan helps, you just are not hot enough yet! 

https://elmassian.com/index.php/large-scale-train-main-page/motive-power-mods-aamp-tips/bachmann-motive-power/45-tonner

The fan was there to cool the electronics, per Bachmann... but sometimes it is installed backwards and blows in a direction that does not help cooling.

Most people toss it.

will a human answer the phone in the parts department?

unfortunately, the "DC dummy board" has a number of components to control the lights, and no circuit diagram is available as far as I know.

1. I would go to a large G scale forum like MLS and ask there.
2. you could buy an adapter plug from Bachmann and do some wiring to make the lights work...

I do not know for sure, but I believe the flicker electronics just need to be powered,

Did you look to see if they have them on the store.

check ebay, the only indicator unless you want to track other auctions..

(TRAINZ.com will indicate last selling price)

did you check first to see if the wiring diagrams are on the Bachmann site?

umm... 26 years of experience with Bachmann?     

unfortunately, many bachmann gears split, the white "nylon" ones.

The most requested repair part.

no delrin... never stock on any bachmann.

so, you are talking only the center gearbox... i've never heard of people having issues with the... the trucks, yes.. universal joints, yes.

you could drill a small access hole and squirt grease inside, but be careful not to drill in and leave bits of plastic inside or ruin gears.

Some older bachmanns had access ports on the bottom side of gearboxes, but I do not thing the climax has...

I would not worry about this particular area.

I like the gel type grease for these... it clings to the gears, but has the lubricity of oil, and is clear, so doesn't look messy.

Basically on Bachmann locos, lube everything!

Greg

big changes at bachmann slowly adding socket to their loco line.

I think it is a good thing, but the motherboard does take up precious space, and many battery conversion "experts" still espouse removing all the original electronics to reclaim space.

In the old days, no big deal, just some more wiring. But now, there are electronics on the motherboard for the LEDs and more importantly for the chuff "switch" that makes the task harder if you remove the motherboard.

I recommend that you leave the motherboard intact and get the adapter plug (currently out of stock at Bachmann) and then use its pigtails to wire up. You do indeed have to be more creative in battery and speaker placement.

By the way, the adapter plug is Bachmann part # as shown below