Athearn blue box motor

[dalehenigman]

Hi, all! I have some of my athearn locos run a little slower frontwards than backwards. took motors out and found motors run a little slower in one direction than the other. Was wondering if anyone knew why this was or if this was normal. Also have a motor that seems like it runs equally in both directions. Thanks.....Dale

 

[montanan]

Years ago I bought some Athearn locomotives and did had a few that acted like that. There were bought around 30 years ago and I don't know if Athearn has improved the old open frame motor very much, but I could be wrong. I ended up replacing all of the motors in the few Athearn locomotives with a quality can motor which greatly improved the performance of the locomotive.

Before replacing the original motors, I lubricated the worm gear in each gear tower on the truck and also applied (lightly) some teflon (A plastic compatible grease will work) grease to the gears in each truck. This did improve the locomotive performance quite a bit, dropping the amperage draw from almost three quarters of an amp to less than a quarter of an amp.

I was never particularly fond of the Athearn locomotive motors, especially after Atlas brought out their line of Alco locomotives with the Kato drive which ran, and still run so quietly and smoothly. It was after getting the Atlas locomotives that I remotored the Athearn locomotives, and this dramatically improved their performance to very close to the Atlas units.

 

[Greg@mnrr]

Could be fiction due to the slack (movement) in the motor's armature when reversing and causing fiction on the moving parts. It's been awhile since I worked on older Athearn motors.

Thanks.

Greg

 

[riogrande]

Years ago I bought some Athearn locomotives and did had a few that acted like that. There were bought around 30 years ago and I don't know if Athearn has improved the old open frame motor very much, but I could be wrong.

Athearn has upgraded the open frame motor once or twice during the blue box era but spotty quality has been a long term issue with Athearn; some ran well and others were coffee grinders.

In the new, post Irv Athearn era, the RTR diesels they have been in producing since around 2000, the motors were likely revised again. But as before, QAQC issues remained between 2000 and 2006 and customers of the RTR engines reported some ran smooth and quiet and some were again, coffee grinders. I bought a Kodachrome SD40T-2 cheap off of a guy who disconnected the spline rods to turn it into a dummy because it ran so poorly - it was from that time frame.

Most of the Athearn RTR engines I have bought have been since 2007 (a few SD50's, a bunch of tunnel motors and a bunch of SD45s. I haven't run all of them yet but of the ones I have, so far, none have been coffee grinders, but some of them run with an audible hum but run fairly smooth. A few of the SD45's I've run were nice and quiet and, dare I say, similar to KATO's!

Long and short of it, if you have a coffee grinder, there have been some who could remove the motor and polish the commutators to help quiet them down with some good success. Making sure they are properly lubed is always a good idea. I pulled out an Athearn SD45T-2 manufactured maybe 6 years ago, and it made some screeching sounds while running. Some guys informed that the lubricant can go dry while they are stored in boxes for some years so I dropped abit of plastic compatible lubricant into the gears and it helped.

Also FYI, Athearn has offered remotoring kits for a few of the SD RTR loco's to bring them up to Genesis motor quality standards and make them better for DCC and sound installations. So even Athearn has, in a way, acknowledged their RTR line motors are not great and may be suitable for "upgrading".

 

[dalehenigman]

I substituted a kato motor in an athearn SD-40-2 but I didn't see much improvement in slow speed performance. I have a life-like SD 50 that performs pretty well with the walthers athearn-style motor. I put a walthers motor in an athearn AC44 and the performance is OK... none match the performance of life-like or Kato with the 14 to 1 gears. athearns are 12 to 1. So Im thinking the gear ratios are the thing here, but which I have to put up with. I have an Athearn GP 50 that I shaved the edges of the gear teeth and ran the gearbox with Turtle wax rubbing compound in it. It does quite well. I have Improved Athearn motors by dressing the commutators with 400 sandpaper while running at full speed. I don't know if this a good idea or not but seems to work. Noisy motors may be a function of bumpy commutator or out of balance flywheels. None of this matches DCC engines but my budget doesn't allow this much money....Dale.

 

[chessie_system3]

I'm a couple days late for this party. Anyone who knows me on here knows I'm a huge fan of Athearn and most of my fleet is Athearn. Blue box motors can be made to run good if you aint afraid to get into them. Even the hated grey can motors can be made decent. What I do and have found works really well for me is as a starting point I shave the flywheels. It evens out any bumps. Movement of the shaft however I have found you need parts. As in the washers on the can motor itself. Helps to have some spare parts. Though I have found that really doesn't change the overall running of my locomotives. It just causes a hesitation when changing direction. Now sluggish operations I have found the actual gears in the axle housing have excess plastic left over from the molding process causing them to bind which will slow the locomotive down. Best way I know to check this is to remove the truck itself and run it back and forth on your hand. If it snags them you have a gear or two that is bound up. You'll have to take apart the truck and flash the gears. I have found that lubrication alone won't solve this issue. These are the things I go through on all of my blue box locomotives just as a starting point.


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[montanan]

Justin - You are so correct. A little bit of work can really improve the performance of the Athearn motor. As I mentioned above, a bit of lubrication can make a lot of difference and drop the amperage draw of the motor. What I did on mine greatly improved the performance. I did run the Athearn motor for quite a while but did notice one thing that bothered me. I have a number of grades on my layout and the Athearn powered locomotives would pick up way more speed going downgrade compared to the Atlas powered Alco units. Also, coming upgrade, the Athearn motored locomotives would lose a lot more speed pulling a train up my grades compared the the Atlas locomotives.

If you don't have any steep grades, I can't see any reason not to tune up the Athearn locomotives as they will serve you very well. A footnote to the remotoring of the Athearn locomotives to a can motor did work out very good for me as with the new motors, the speed did not drop off going dowgrade and did not drop much speed at all pulling a load upgrade AND the ran at almost the identical speed as the Atlas locomotives. Still running DC only, I can mix and match the locomotives if I need to run a train with multiple units.

 

[dalehenigman]

Thank you all for your input. I've pieced together enough of my my spare parts to make a reasonable running motor. Machining flywheels I cant do. But everything else I can. I may look further into can motors and try again.

 

[chessie_system3]

Thank you all for your input. I've pieced together enough of my my spare parts to make a reasonable running motor. Machining flywheels I cant do. But everything else I can. I may look further into can motors and try again.

All you should need for your flywheels is a cheap old file. That's how I do mine anyways. Hopefully you can get it sorted out and get some better performance out of them.

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[Greg@mnrr]

Am I dream or is this an old wife's tale, do I remember correctly reading in one of the old model railroader magazines about cleaning the old Athearn gears and then applying toothpaste to the gears and running the locomotive to polish the plastic worm and other gears. This was circa 1965.

Help me or am I crazy?

Greg

 

[montanan]

I do believe that I had read that many many moons ago. Wonder what happened when the tooth pase dried up and solidified?

 

[chessie_system3]

From what I have heard the idea is to clean the gears once they were cleaned up and then lubricate. I have also heard you can clean them up using a needle file as well. I have enough parts that I just played around with the gears until I got the wheels to free spin without any snags.

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[Iron Horseman]

Am I dream or is this an old wife's tale, do I remember correctly reading in one of the old model railroader magazines about cleaning the old Athearn gears and then applying toothpaste to the gears and running the locomotive to polish the plastic worm and other gears. This was circa 1965.

Help me or am I crazy?

No that was a common thing back then (when the molds were new and tight), the idea was to wear them down a tiny bit and make them smoother. Probably a bad analogy, but I always sort of thought of it as "seating" them, like the rings of a car engine.

Wonder what happened when the tooth pase dried up and solidified?

No, no, the toothpaste was used for its abrasive qualities. It had to be completely removed after the process and replaced with normal lubrication or it would end up grinding the gears to nothing.

I have some of my athearn locos run a little slower frontwards than backwards. took motors out and found motors run a little slower in one direction than the other. Was wondering if anyone knew why this was or if this was normal.

My theory would be that when they were brand new, they weren't broken in properly. Too much running in one direction and not enough in the other.