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 Posted - January 28 2025 : 12:23:29 PM
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Took out a bunch of Athearn diesels to check All motors work but wheels do not turn Also early and later Tyco have similar , problems Any thoughts?
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Posted - January 28 2025 : 2:30:10 PM
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What vintage Athearn? Are they band drives with no bands? Gear drive Athearns can suffer from cracked gears but I don’t think that makes them not run at all.
The pinion gears on Tyco PowerTorques have a tendency to slip on the motor shaft. A touch of CA should fix that.
Glenn
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said, "... I drank what?"
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Posted - January 28 2025 : 4:51:24 PM
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| Athearns are pretty bulletproof and easy to work on. If the motor turns but not the wheels the first place I'd look at are the universal couplings. They may have cracked or worked their way loose on the motor or worm shafts. I haven't had much of a problem with cracked axle gears- that was a Proto2000 problem. Fortunately, the early Proto units used an Athearn clone drive, and Athearn parts are interchangeable with Proto ones. Believe it or not I've had far more problems with Atlas engines than Athearn ones, particularly the late 70s era yellow box Atlas units.
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Posted - January 28 2025 : 9:00:13 PM
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That’s right, it was a Proto2000 problem. What I remember hearing is that one should be wary of purchasing used Athearns, because their gears sometimes get taken to repair Proto2000s, and the cracked gears end up in the Athearns.
Glenn
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said, "... I drank what?"
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Posted - January 28 2025 : 9:37:39 PM
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| I will post pics but in short Athearn are geared with round motors TYCO are red box and Saa Le era
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Posted - January 29 2025 : 12:12:35 PM
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quote:That’s right, it was a Proto2000 problem. What I remember hearing is that one should be wary of purchasing used Athearns, because their gears sometimes get taken to repair Proto2000s, and the cracked gears end up in the Athearns.
Originally posted by gmoney - January 28 2025 : 9:00:13 PM
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I buy new geared wheelsets from Athearn to fix my Protos, then use the nickle silver wheels from the protos to replace the sintered ones in my Athearns. It's two upgrades for one. The old Athearn axle gears are reused and the broken Proto ones are discarded.
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