One of the pilot wires hass come off in one of my very old Big Haulers. Does the bottom come off easily in order to re-solder it? I’ve never taken the bottom off of my Big Haulers before. I looked for an exploded view of these very old Big Haulers but only see newer model exploded views. Any help is greatly appreciated.
It is for power pickup from the rails. If your main power pickups on your drivers work, you might not even need that wire hooked back up. Tape it so it doesn’t short against anything and try the locomotive.
Otherwise, you will have to solder it back up to the buss wire under the pilot.
Yes, I know what it is. My question was how to I access it in order to solder it back up.
Ok… after studying it for a bit and some trial and error I figured out how to remove the bottom plate to gain access to the pilot. I spliced in a new section of wire. All is well now.
Timmy
Timmy,
Late to the fight, but searc “Nort Star” for our fight to keep one of these alive. We have found the plastic gets brittle, making each repair trickier than the last as the various bits break away. As the Loco runs just fine without the pilot wired into the electrical harness, I would advise taking @John_Bouck 's advice should it fail again rather than undertaking an unnecessary repair that may jeopardize the material soundness of the model.
Eric
Well, I got the pilot pick-up re-wired but the train keeps de-railing going into turns. It appears the pilot is sticking and not moving smoothly in the slot. I’ve greased it. Tried oiling it but something keeps getting hung up. I don’t run this locomotive very often at all but would like to get it running smoothly again. I would replace the chassis if I could find one. My other option is to part this thing out. What is the trick getting the cross bars off? They don’t appear to unscrew from the wheels.
We would weight our pilots down with those little sticky flat weights they put in HO or O scale locomotives. That solved the derailment sometimes.
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Timmy,
You can order chassis from B’mann for about $160. You may have to do some cutting and sanding to fit your boiler and cab. It will come with crummy nylon gears, and you may want to go ahead and replace them with gears available via Jiro Yeramian on FaceBook. I detailed my application of Pete’s (@PeterT ) gear replacement tutorial here: Bachmann 4-6-0 Periodically Stops and Whines.
The pilot is a pain. We once screwed ours on too tightly, and it would bind and derail on curves. You might try taking the lower chassis hull off again and backing off a couple turns on the screw.
Eric
There is a very easy solution to the pilot derailing, and it does NOT involve weight.
The pilot has 2 metal strips running down the middle and collecting power from the axles. See that little nylon block with an arrow just above the center, and the one below with no arrow? Just pry them out [push fit] with a small screwdriver. What you get is a very floppy pilot with perfect suspension!
Just glue a strip of something down the middle to stop the strips or wires from touching.
My 4-6-0 ran for years with this mod and never derailed the pilot again.
Maybe your wires are tied up on something - does it only happen on left hand corners or right, or both? You can always add one of the later version ‘drawbars’.
What crossbars? you mean the coupling rods between the wheels? They just pop out with careful application of a screwdriver.
It appears to be derailing only on left hand turns.
Yes, I mean the coupling rods.
Left hand turns, apparently. Better check your wires have enough play so the truck isn’t restrained.