Any thoughts on why my LGB 0-4-0 – the chunky steamer with tender sound – and well-lubed with grease, makes comparatively excessive internal gear noise running in reverse? The loco has a year 2000 build date and was made in China. Maybe there is 10 hours on the loco. Forward is fine. I didn’t see any burrs on the gears – even so, would’nt that also have activated the growling sound moving forward?
So am I damaging the loco gears to run it?
Thanks for any insights.
Wendell
NEWS:
Ron Gilbson, formerly long-time managment with LGB and now heading LGB with Marklin, indicates the gearing in the chunky Chinese-built O-4-0 and 2-4-0 steamer is a known problem. The apparent cause is the plastic used. My guess, not affirmed by him as yet, is what Dave Goodson spoke to years ago: China uses plastic “sweepings”, while not contaminated, which have simply been previously processed and lose tensil strength from the process.
Ron indicated there are new “virgin plastic” gears being produced that will be available.
Wendell
Wendell,
these locomotives have only ever been made in China. They have long had a reputation for noisy operation. General thought was that the noise originated from the pivot pin that mounts the idler gears at either end of the motor. Turn the loco on its side and look near the drivers where the end of the pivot shaft is seen each side. Place a small amount of oil on the end of the shaft. Operation required both sides. Barring this, disassemble the drive and lubricate the loco correctly.
Up until tits up in 2006, Chinese LGB was renowned for lack of lubrication during assemble, thus any subsequent operation was usually without lube resulting in increased wear. Good luck with replacement gears as, as far as I know, replacement gears have never been available for these drives.Yup, we have two ‘Otto’s’ - one green and one orange. The green one sounds lik ejust about any real LGB loco, but the orange one sounded like a buzzsaw when we got it. I did as Tim suggests, and fixed it - but it’s not a permanent fix by any means - needs doing every couple of hours running time, IMO.
tac, ig & The Hall-Oakes Lumber Co Boys
Tim and Tac-
Many thanks. I’ll try it and report back.
Saga of gears…continues
Unfortunately, the oiling of the gear shaft ends didn’t resolve the problem of the “buzzsaw” sound in reverse.
So I will await the new gears.
I did, as Tim encouraged, lubed the entire gear and axle operation.
Wendell
Ron Gibson offered that a 1000 of these little locos were manufacturered in China by LGB, Germany.
Wendell,
only 1000??? Surely at least 10,000. Just as an ‘exercise’, possibly strip the drive and reverse the location of the idler gears and rotate them 180 degrees around the vertical axis to see if the noise moves to forward direction.
I have found the axle gears slip out of position and eventually cause the gears to strip on the 20232 style loco.
I add a washer to the idler gear to keep it from moving side to side and look very carefully at the axle gears to insure they will do at least a 50 per cent mesh when moving both the idler and axle gear in opposite directions.
I do not know if this will reduce the noise issue, but it surely makes this engine run better.
Wendel, for your enlightenment and edification, a line that I have retained in memory for the past fifty years, from a Rolls-Royce advertisement of the 1920’s: “Where there’s noise, there’s wear…”
I have been unsuccessful in Googling up a pic of this loco, but I get the drift on the mech all right. I wonder if installing a decent, maybe brass or, better, a bronze, bearing at each end of the idler gearshaft would help - they could be bodged from a bit of brass tubing perhaps - does either the gear or the shaft wobble at all? 'Nuther question - is the idler gear hole properly centered thru the gear ? ( I imagine it is if it is a one-piece plastic casting, but if machined, then the hole might be eccentric.
About now I do wish we had a pic here…
John and all:
Thanks for your responses. I fortunately got a new gear and will try it. I’ll look for both John’s and Dan’s options. For some reason the gears are not quiet in reverse. More later after the surgery.
Wendell
I had a Westside models brass C16 in HOn3 gauge and it was the same way, never did figure out why, all the gears were good, no wear or burrs ect. It ran for years that way till I sold it. Let us all know how the new gears work out. Mike
Mike and all:
The gear exchange did not include the large gear on the wheel axles – which appears to be very solidly compressed onto each axle and shows no wear – it was the immediate “double gear” that rides directly on both sides (worms) of the motor that was exchanged. Here’s the results: Still noise in reverse. One suggestion has been the motor brushes.
I have never had this much repair interest in an LGB loco – As a compliment to LGB, I have three of them, all to date 12 years of running without repair.
Puzzling.
Wendell
I would have to see it in person at this point Wendall. If you really wanna get rid of the noise, without beating your head on the wall, I can suggest two options. Either ship engine to myself or to Watts Train Shop in Zionsville, Indiana. Either Dave Watts himself or Ross B usualy will be the one to work on them there. I do quite a bit of repair work as I live to the north of their shop by an hour or so. We have 3 resturants that run LGB overhead that I do the maintance on when needed as well as the repair work for The Train Exchange located here in Kokomo, Indiana where I live. It could be brushes, to much end play in the motor. To many variables to just guess at. Something is making it noisy, it shouldnt just be that way. Mike
I sent my MTS porter to LGB of old 7 years ago for gear noise issues and they were unable to ‘fix’ the engine. Friends later tried to send theirs in and LGB refused to ‘fix’ gear noise issues. To be fair, I believe both were the toytrain versions of the cow loco, however they were under the 1 year warranty.
My continued interest in this saga is diminishintg – as I suspect is yours.
However, persistent, I did try lubing the backside of the driver wheels slightly to test the wheel brushes as the source for the abrasive sound. No luck. Running the engine on test blocks now produced an unexpected “warm up” time before the loco attained full forward speed. After about 15 seconds of hesitancy, full speed was attained. Reverse followed the same pattern – yet, with the abrasive sound running in reverse no matter the speed.
The LGB 1 amp transformer is used.
In short, my suspicion is the motor. Could the Chinese have used an alternative to the ever-reliable Buehler?
Wendell
FYI, Train-Li has replacement idler gears for the 20230 American loco.
The idler gear sits on a rod that goes through the motor block which is force fitted in the block and does not turn easily, just lube the idler gear on the shaft on the inside of the motor block. Also check for side play in both ends of the motor shaft. This causes lots of problems like noise and gear wear.