Quicker Loco warm-up?


KB02

KB02

Well-Known Member
One of my engines, an old Bluebox Athearn converted to DCC, is a pokey and worthless thing until it warms up. And by warming up, I mean running for 10 - 15 minutes. Then it seems to work better and be far more responsive to throttle input - bump it up to speed step 10 and it will slowly lumber off like it is supposed to. Bump jump right to 10 when it's cold and it won't even move.

I could just live with this knowledge and work it accordingly, but right now I have it MU'ed to two other practically identical engines (the power is needed to pull long trains up a rather steep slope on my layout). If I run the consist cold, you can hear the engines fighting and wheels slipping for a good 10 minutes before they even out.

The gear sets are all nicely lubed, anything else I could do to help this bugger kick into gear quicker?
 
Check the brushes on that old motor. Also being from back then it's probably at most a straight 3 pole armature. They can be a bit jerky. At least you should be able to get a tiny drop of oil onto the motor's bearings, I use a fine piece of wire, flattened at the end to get into tight spots. Failing that, a new can motor. If it's not matching the other engines in speed, it'll be getting dragged along and hindering rather than helping.
 
KB02 said:
One of my engines, an old Bluebox Athearn converted to DCC, is a pokey and worthless thing until it warms up. And by warming up, I mean running for 10 - 15 minutes. Then it seems to work better and be far more responsive to throttle input - bump it up to speed step 10 and it will slowly lumber off like it is supposed to. Bump jump right to 10 when it's cold and it won't even move.
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Have you experimented to determine if the "warm up" is needed by the mechanical aspects of it, or is it a decoder warm up issue?
 
You say the gears are all nicely lubed.
Exactly what does this mean? Too much lube is not better, it makes things worse.
How old is the lube? It may have thickened up and needs time to loosen up, thus the extra time required to get good performance.
Have you checked the amp draw of the motor when cold vs when it is warmed up?
Is the commutator clean or covered in carbon black from the brushes? If you have to clean it make sure to clean out the groves between each segment of the commutator.
These are some of the things I check on my older locos when I experience sluggish performance.
 
Try cleaning out the thick lube oil, and replace it with the thinner, synthetic oil, like Labell 108.
If that, and cleaning the brushes/commutator doesn't help, it is probably time for a motor. The one in the engine is most likely old and tired. One thing you didn't mention is how old that old blue box engine is. Does the engine at least have one of the gold-colored flatter motors, or is it one of the old iron ring motors?
 
Nothing like a good long soak in a hot tub, to free up those stiff joints. Just don't drop the hair dryer in too.
 
Ha, ha! Yeah, the blow torch idea has crossed my mind.

This is an old engine I picked up on ebay a while back. I went through the whole thing and cleaned it up and relubed the gears. I thinking the motor is the issue. Whether it is worth remotoring or not is another question. I'll have to pull the brushed out and clean them up, too.
 
The brushes are made of carbon, which wears away eventually to the point that the little coil springs pressing them against the commutator can no longer do so with enough pressure to maintain conductivity. Hence poor performance and eventually stopping the motor. Dust from them will also build up in their slides, having the same effect. Pretty sure you can still get new brushes, you'll notice the difference in length.
 
Athearn GP38-2 Bluebox model painted in Conrail blue. #8276. NCE DSR13J decoder.

Last night I pulled out,and apart, the motor. I cleaned/polished up the commutator. The brushes were actually not in bad shape at all. I then torn apart both gear boxes and went through those as well. Maybe too much lubricant? So I dried it up a bit. Certainly no binding and no broken gears. Everything ran nice and smooth. Put it all back together and figured I would start from scratch so i dropped it on the programming track and reset the decoder as well.

Then it ran backwards. ???

That had me perplexed for about half an hour. My best guess was that I simply put the contact clips onto the wring side of the motor, but the way I had installed the decoder, the wires were pretty much cut custom length, so the wires could not have been switched. The the forward light was on when it running reverse, so changing the normal direction of travel didn't work. Really not sure why that happened, so I just ended up cutting and swapping the +/- wires to the motor and then it ran correctly.

Anyway, I haven't had a chance to remap the speed settings yet, but one thing I have noticed:
With the decoder set to factory settings, the engine starts to move at speed step 5, but then stops. I can't get it moving again until I bump it up a couple more steps. If I jump right the speed step 6, it will move no problem, but much faster than I want my speed step 1 to be (I run 28 Speed Steps). Would that be any kind of clue to anyone for something to look at?
 
KB02 said:
Athearn GP38-2 Bluebox model painted in Conrail blue. #8276. NCE DSR13J decoder.

Last night I pulled out,and apart, the motor. I cleaned/polished up the commutator. The brushes were actually not in bad shape at all. I then torn apart both gear boxes and went through those as well. Maybe too much lubricant? So I dried it up a bit. Certainly no binding and no broken gears. Everything ran nice and smooth. Put it all back together and figured I would start from scratch so i dropped it on the programming track and reset the decoder as well.

Then it ran backwards. ???

That had me perplexed for about half an hour. My best guess was that I simply put the contact clips onto the wring side of the motor, but the way I had installed the decoder, the wires were pretty much cut custom length, so the wires could not have been switched. The the forward light was on when it running reverse, so changing the normal direction of travel didn't work. Really not sure why that happened, so I just ended up cutting and swapping the +/- wires to the motor and then it ran correctly.

Anyway, I haven't had a chance to remap the speed settings yet, but one thing I have noticed:
With the decoder set to factory settings, the engine starts to move at speed step 5, but then stops. I can't get it moving again until I bump it up a couple more steps. If I jump right the speed step 6, it will move no problem, but much faster than I want my speed step 1 to be (I run 28 Speed Steps). Would that be any kind of clue to anyone for something to look at?
Click to expand...
It'll run backwards because you assembled the motor upside down. Pull it back apart, and turn the gold part of the motor upside down from how it is now, then re-assemble.
 
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