Speed Demon!


macjet

Member
I recently bought my fourth P2K GP38-2. The newest one runs at over twice the speed of my other three. I can put it in the lead of an uncoupled threesome and in three laps around my short layout it will have gone from the lead engine to the trailing engine and about to run the others off the track. It won't run in a consist because it is either pushing the lead engine off the track or slipping and jerking trying to pull one of the others at it's speed.

I contacted Walthers and they said that all four are from the same run and gearing. I don't know what to do. Right now it's sitting by it's lonesome on a siding.

Any thoughts?

PS- This is a straight DC setup.
 
I had exacly the opposite problem with my P2K GP38-2: In straight DC, it ran only half as fast as any of my other engines. So I figured I'd just use it as a yard goat. Then I installed a decoder (don't remember the make/model#) and, when I performed the initial test, it ran at normal speed! Go figure....:confused:

(Of course I'm NOT complaining though!:D)
 
If I were to go to a DCC system could I adjust the various speeds of the different locos to match up better? I'm already wanting to upgrade to sound so the DCC idea is already stirring around.
 
Well that's not good. $500 to fix a $50 problem. To make it worse, this speed queen (RI) is supposed to be paired with it's RI sister which happens to be the slowest engine (not by much) on the layout. So here I've got the tortoise and the hare in RI blue trying to take each other off the rails. What a mess. I thought I was sitting pretty with P2K when all three of my SF engines ran beautifully together.
 
I didn't make any changes to CV's on mine, the speed just corrected itself automatically.

By '$500' do you mean buying new DCC hardware (command station, throttle, cabling)? That's an investment, goes way beyond just correcting the speed on one engine. But actually, you can get some pretty decent DCC starter sets, such as the NCE PowerCAB or the Digitraxx Zephyr, for under $200.
 
I didn't make any changes to CV's on mine, the speed just corrected itself automatically.

By '$500' do you mean buying new DCC hardware (command station, throttle, cabling)? That's an investment, goes way beyond just correcting the speed on one engine. But actually, you can get some pretty decent DCC starter sets, such as the NCE PowerCAB or the Digitraxx Zephyr, for under $200.

Yep. I bought this engine off ebay for $50 NIB. I hate to spend a ton of money right now just to fix this one engine. I was hoping it was a gear problem but Walthers is saying that they are all the same run. I might just send it in to them and hope this was an oddball with different gears. Or I could just run them separately.
 
There are a lot of reasons that I would like to convert to DCC. All of these you all are more aware of than I. Our current layout is a small L shaped dog-bone. This is learning layout for me and a run-the-trains-in-circles for the little one right now. As he get older and I get more experienced we'll look into building a bigger layout that runs DCC.

But I really do like going to the Broadway Limited website and listening to their sound demo! Sounds great.
 
Maybe it is a gear problem. Somebody might have already swapped out the original gears with something that doesn't quite match the same ratio as the OEM.

What you might want to try and do is swap trucks with another, slower loco. Should be easy to do that.

But, you might want to see how the mechanism runs without the shell on first. Does it start quicker? How fast do the flywheels spin at low throttle settings?

You might want to take the shell off of one of the slower locos to compare. If the motor spins at the same speed (as referenced by the flywheels), then it's a gear thing. If the motor spins faster, theni it's the motor.

BTW, for laughs once, I put zebra stripes on the flywheel of one of my locos with a Sharpie. While it was neat to watch the pattern spin around, I did discover that was a good way to see just how fast the motor spun at really low throttle settings.

Kennedy
 
Maybe it is a gear problem. Somebody might have already swapped out the original gears with something that doesn't quite match the same ratio as the OEM.

What you might want to try and do is swap trucks with another, slower loco. Should be easy to do that.

But, you might want to see how the mechanism runs without the shell on first. Does it start quicker? How fast do the flywheels spin at low throttle settings?

You might want to take the shell off of one of the slower locos to compare. If the motor spins at the same speed (as referenced by the flywheels), then it's a gear thing. If the motor spins faster, theni it's the motor.

BTW, for laughs once, I put zebra stripes on the flywheel of one of my locos with a Sharpie. While it was neat to watch the pattern spin around, I did discover that was a good way to see just how fast the motor spun at really low throttle settings.

Kennedy

I did this. I have a motor problem. The motor in the fast loco spins at almost twice the speed of it's sisters. Maybe I should contact Walthers.
 
Does any of your locos have some kind of circuit board on top of the motor? I'm asking only because some locos have boards that have a lot of resistors, and those will cut the voltage to the motor at the same throttle setting.

I don't think your locos are in that boat, but I'm throwing that out to see if anybody else here might have an idea.

Kennedy
 
They're all newer Proto 2000 with the circuit boards on top. DCC plug-in I believe. This one in question is currently in it's box, minus the shell, ready to go back to Life-Like for repair.
 



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