Now that I have had some time to get rather Aquanted with my 2-6-6-2, some things have become pretty clear to me. Things that can use some improvemnt, and things that could use some tweaking. First off, This was not a "New" model when it came to me, I bought it as a basket case, after it took a dive nose first onto a floor. It was in pretty bad shape, but this forced me to take it appart and examine the beast from all angles. One of the first things I noticed, witch is no suprize to anyone I am sure, this thing has a S-load of small details, witch was shocking it faired as well as it did from the fall, Although I have since discovered, they are pretty tough. Once it was running again, I noticed mine has a Lobe to it when it ran at low speeds, tinkering with it for months, I soon found that the rear Motor had a driver our of quater by a miniscule amount, once fixed it is smooth though all range of speeds. In the prossess of trial and error in elimnating the cause of the lobe, I bound parts up by mistake, creating drag on the mech. I noticed then, when their is a drag, the rear of the front truck picks up off the rails and vise versa for the rear, Getting the locomotive back to it's loose and running state, I continued to watch that front engine, and under extreme loads, like verge of slipping, the front axel on that front motor actually, in a way, bares down on the rails. in reverse, the rear axel of the rear engine does the same. I am planning on adding some kind of traction tire/bullfrog snot sometime, and I think I know where to put it now. Bachmann's decoders SUCK, Yeah I am still running it for now, it is a working decoder and my train budget is non existent as of now. My biggest gripe is the lack of options, this thing is locked down worse than an Iphone. seems like all the typical adjustments are not accessable, like speed tables. Yeah, I can adjust the start mid and max volts, but the speed tables is what I use to sync it with the other locos I have. Also the thing is HUGE, takes up a good 2/3 of the b-mann long tender, and the wiring colors are not NMRA, although with the internet, it will be easy to figure out what wire goes where on the board. from what I understand this is a Lenz decoder, but I expect better from Lenz. Tender swapping is a breeze, I wish other manufactures would take notice. It came with a Vandy tender. and because I føøbied it in the Northern Pacific, this wasn't going to work. I ended up trading strait acrost for a USRA long tender, the swap was just a matter of opening the tenders, unplugging, detaching drawbar, and reversing the prossess on the new tender. I love it!w Overall I like this run, I hope Bachmann keeps putting out good spectrum steam locomotives, I wanna keep expanding my stable!
I've noticed the same thing regarding the rearmost axle of the front engine lifting up when under load. I wonder if this is the reaction from the torque transfer through the drive gear? Perhaps limiting the vertical movement of the front axle will help. Here's the geared driver set with Life-Like 0-8-0 traction tires fitted. I had to cut an .018 inch deep x .030 inch wide groove for the relatively thick traction tire, but there is enough metal in the driver to do this without harm. I'm still trying to get mine to run as smoothly in reverse as it does going forward, plus I need to fit a working coupler to the pilot.
Have you ever heard of Harbor Freight? They have pretty good deals on hobby lathes... Not trying to be a spokesman, just giving out ideas for us "poor men" around here haha.
