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 Posted - July 26 2012 : 9:54:26 PM
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Tonight I decided to clean-up a first edition metal Athearn RDC unit. Everything was going as planned until I took the motor out to clean it and run it. The motor was starting to run again, but all of the sudden parts went flying across the room. The commutator exploded ripping off the brushes and the armature wiring. So the motor is trash and now I need to hunt down a replacement. ARGH!!!!
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Country:  USA ~
Posts: 25 ~
Member Since: December 17 2011 ~
Last Visit: November 18 2019
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Posted - July 26 2012 : 10:03:53 PM
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That's a shame. I had the same thing happen with the motor from the Penn Line Midget Loopy sent me, but I was actually able to reconstruct it. Of course I had to search my entire living room for the 5 plates first.
I tied a loop of strong thread around the plates near the windings, then saturated everything with Zap CA and polished the heck out of it. Re-soldering the windings was a pretty finicky, especially because the motor had been subject to overheating, which is probably what cooked the fiber commutator parts in the first place. Surprisingly, it runs well.
The Tyco Depot
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Country: USA ~
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Last Visit: November 19 2015
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Posted - July 26 2012 : 10:06:09 PM
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Owwwww... yer not gonna find that motor easily....
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Posted - July 26 2012 : 11:12:35 PM
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I have a 5-gallon bin full of those early all metal Athearn locos. Some of them are the rare RDC4's that they discontinued when they went to the plastic versions. I do know I do not have any spare motors. In fact I am sure I am missing a few. If I come across one, I'll try to remember this post.
Good luck getting it back together if you can!
Sean
"If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough!" - Mario Andretti!
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Country: USA ~
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