Lionchief Plus Hollow Axles - Watch out...

When you pay less, you get less.  Thanks for the heads up Gregr.

 Most postwar diesels have hollow axles (not made of brass) with magnet inserts to provide magnetraction. The magnets are not loose inside.
The diesels with solid axles and external magnets are the early ALCOs and early switchers with die cast truck blocks.  I believe that GG-1's have external magnets, but I'd have to check one.

Marty Fitzhenry posted:

When you pay less, you get less.  Thanks for the heads up Gregr.

That shouldn't be a way to look at it at all, to me anyway.  You get a person who buys a set or locomotive like that as their first impression of Lionel and you've probably lost them forever on that brand.  

And for a brand new locomotive, that axle looks like it's from 1901.  No excuse for a locomotive to be made of lousy materials on any level.

Marty Fitzhenry posted:

When you pay less, you get less.  Thanks for the heads up Gregr.

Not sure what you meant by that, but these things aren't exactly "cheap".  Not everyone has the means or the desire to buy $1800 Legacy locomotives...

Now, if you mean Lionel is using cheap materials, absolutely true and unacceptable.

This is the part where a Lionel rep chimes in and says:

" My bad, due to the lack of available solid axles we chose to use hollow axles this time. I could have done better".........

Marty Fitzhenry posted:

When you pay less, you get less.  Thanks for the heads up Gregr.

"When you pay less, you get less." Agreed, Marty, I would wholeheartedly expect and accept that philosophy with features but it shouldn't be that way with a train part as basic as an axle.

Now my question is, would the basic lube suggested in the instructions prevent this from happening? Or is this a manufacturing issue?

Penn-Pacific posted:

Now my question is, would the basic lube suggested in the instructions prevent this from happening? Or is this a manufacturing issue?

Oiling the axles would have delayed this issue from developing. However, the materials used would have caused a very premature death for this locomotive regardless of maintenance.

Wow. Not good news. How many times have you seen this issue?

SMH...

bigtruckpete posted:

Wow. Not good news. How many times have you seen this issue?

Today, for the first time. Not sure if this is new, or if they've been using brass tubes for a while. Most servicing for Lionchief + is for failed circuit boards, loose wiring, loose trucks, etc. I haven't pulled any axles out until now.

I hope my LC+ Camelback doesn't have Magnatraction!

I would think a section of brass may be worth more than the same in steel.  I have a LC+  GP-7 that needs to be looked at.  I will give the axle a look.   I am a fan of the operation of the LC+. 

mlavender480 posted:

Marty Fitzhenry posted:

When you pay less, you get less.  Thanks for the heads up Gregr.

Not sure what you meant by that, but these things aren't exactly "cheap".  Not everyone has the means or the desire to buy $1800 Legacy locomotives..

And they have loads of problems too!   

And the problems just keep coming.  And I get irritated when my 80 yr old Lionel engine needs work. 

GregR posted:

As the repair guy for my LHS, I see a lot of messed up stuff. Here is a good one. New Lionchief Plus CSX GP38 diesel. Customer had it for about a week. Apparently, no lubrication was applied in the Chinese factory. The customer didn't oil the axles either, but that's never a surprise. Chinese factory oil is usually enough to push through the 1-year warranty, after all. So, the customer brings it in broken. A substance resembling black copier toner comes spilling out everywhere. Huge mess. It was ground up metal. All the axle bearings were shot. The axles were worn down too. The interesting part was that I discovered that Lionel made a change to their Magne-Traction axles at some point recently. Axles always seemed solid in the past, at least made out of steel, not brass. Apparently, they are now thin, hollow brass tubes with loose magnets dropped in. Not good for wear at all. The entire axle falls apart. See attached photo. Another cost cutting misadventure on Lionel's part...

Hello GREGR

I had a lionel LTI era blue and yellow Santa  Fe F-3's # 18117 and these engine have brass hollowed axles with magnets inside too as I was changing to metal gears and found out then.  The Postwar F-3's had Stainless steel hollowed axles with magnets inside.  The postwar F-3 that had those was # 2383.  Lionel is good in turning quality trains into expensive junk just like the picture above.  Many of the members know well that brass is a poor material for gears and axles, bearings.   I gotten tired of dealing with something like this so I completely stopped buying Lionel as long as they keep doing stupid stuffs like this to save money and pass the high cost of repairs on the customer to increase their profits.  I just lost respect for Lionel when they do this.  You can check out the threads about the latest Lionel aquarium cars that was released this year (no motor/ gearbox but a axle gear drive and no lights in it).   If I was to go back to Lionel, it will be a #2383 and put on custom painted shell.   I will stick with postwar era period, mind you that even some of the postwar engines are worse junk.  I already have the Williams F-3's set and they use solid nickel plated steel axles and bronze metal gears, solid wheels with traction tires so I sold the Lionel #18117 f-3's.  I will never buy lionel F-3's again except the #2383 of 1958-1966 era.  The Williams F-3's are just postwar copies but they are hard to beat, got to love those older Williams F-3's and NW-2's.

"They were scattered everywhere, and in every place they went, they told people the Good News." Acts 8:4 ERV (Easy to Read Version)

Tiffany

Guys, I remembered I had a LC+ truck that was replaced by a new one.  I opened it up and was very surprised.  The axle hole in the truck block is huge.  The axle is a monster with a brass sleeve.  You can see the scratch I made to show it is brass.  It is a strong magnetic axle.  Here are a few pix of what I found.   BTW, I was very impressed.

The engine this came from was a UP GP-7  6-38825.  The truck part number is 6308502510.

Marty Fitzhenry posted:

Guys, I remembered I had a LC+ truck that was replaced by a new one.  I opened it up and was very surprised.  The axle hole in the truck block is huge.  The axle is a monster with a brass sleeve.  You can see the scratch I made to show it is brass.  It is a strong magnetic axle.  Here are a few pix of what I found.   BTW, I was very impressed.

 

The engine this came from was a UP GP-7  6-38825.  The truck part number is 6308502510.

I can see your axles are in the early stages of a similar demise.  Very soft material. You mentioned the oversize bearings. I didn't bring this issue up in my earlier post, but these oversize bearings do contribute significantly to increased wear. You don't have to be an engineer to know this, but the more mismatched the diameters become between the axle and bearing, the greater the force which is imparted on the bearing by the axle and vice versa. These axles will literally carve into the top surface of the bearings. If they were better matched with less slop, there would be a more uniform distribution of force, particularly under a lubricated load, and far, far less wear. I'm wondering if this issue is another Metric vs. English unit screw up. Whenever the Chinese redo tooling, it seems to be in Metric. I wonder if the axles are old US tooling and the bearings are Metric? I do know that the Chinese made Pullmor motors substituting 3mm (instead of 1/8") armature shaft into brushplates meant for 1/8" shaft material (brush plates tooled in US). As a result, those Chinese made Pullmors never ran smooth.

Marty Fitzhenry posted:

Guys, I remembered I had a LC+ truck that was replaced by a new one.  I opened it up and was very surprised.  The axle hole in the truck block is huge.  The axle is a monster with a brass sleeve.  You can see the scratch I made to show it is brass.  It is a strong magnetic axle.  Here are a few pix of what I found.   BTW, I was very impressed.

 

The engine this came from was a UP GP-7  6-38825.  The truck part number is 6308502510.

Hello Marty.....

Are those axle bearing brass as they appeal to be in brass color ?  Are those large black gears with the stud pressed in the truck block plastic as they appeal to be ?

"These are the things God told his people. I am the Lord your God.  I am the one who freed you from the land of Egypt, where you were slaves. You must not worship any other gods except me." Exodus 20:1-3 ERV (Easy to Read Version)

Tiffany

Brass and plastic.  You are correct.

I sure hope the NW2 and First batch Hudsons don't have this problem. I already had a dead board in the NW2.

From the pictures it looks like abuse more than another cost cutting misadventure by Lionel.

Rod Miller

Whenever I get a new engine or car, I hit the axle with oil.  A little bit goes a long way.  Being big on preventative maintenance, I have found more people do not do this than do.  I use an insulin syringe with fine sewing machine oil.  Whatever your oil of choice is, please do not skip this step.

Great Advice Marty. Every time I get a new engine, or bring an engine out of storage, first thing I do is hit each axle spot with drop of oil. Certainly can't hurt!!!

Bruce

During the Postwar period, and for a good part of the Modern era, Lionel used Oilite bearings for the axles of most* diesel trucks. Oilite bearings are made of sintered bronze, are porous, and are impregnated with oil. So the axle bearings rarely required lubrication. (supposedly Oilite bearings are lifetime lubricated).
When I want to oil one of those bearings, I use the lightest oil possible. You do not want to clog the pores of the bearings.
Below is a photo of some spare postwar F3 bearings I had handy.

In some of Marty's shots of the truck block, the bearings look like they might be Oilite, in others, not so much.

* - in the mid 1960's Postwar Lionel started making ALCO and Switcher power trucks without any bearings at all. And some non-powered trucks were made without bearings, and some of the various motor units were made without bearings on the non-powered axles.

I will give it a look later and try to get a decent photo.  

Tough to photo.  The bearing is paper thin and all chewed up.    Looks like a piece of K&S tubing.  Shinny and I would think it may not be  an oilite bearing.  It was frozen in the truck block.

Tough to photo.  The bearing is paper thin and all chewed up.    Looks like a piece of K&S tubing.  Shinny and I would think it may not be  an oilite bearing.  It was frozen in the truck block.

Sounds like plain brass.
When you look carefully, you can see some of the pores on an Oilite bearing. Often they look like black dots, even on new, old stock pieces. There is a bit of a rough appearance to them.

Only proper design can help "prevent" something from failing too early, but in the end everything fails at some point.

Planned, regularly scheduled maintenance will keep things running as designed, thru inspection and action identify minor problems before they become big problems.

IMO this "axle" was a poor design, using hollow parts and loose tolerances.  Lionel should know better and it will end up costing them more than a well-designed axle would have cost.

(disclaimer - I spent 14+ years writing maintenance procedures for the navy)

Usually bearings are made of a softer material such as brass or bronze, and axles are made of a harder material such as steel. Having a brass axle in a brass bearing is a very poor choice of materials and will result in higher friction and faster wear. Brass bearings themselves are not a bad thing, the prototype used them for decades until the production rechnology made ball/roller bearings economically feasible. Mantua HO locos used replaceable brass bearings in their steam locos, and they held up very well, seldom needing replacement.

Are the more expensive LC+ steam engines using a similar brass axle? I would surely hope not, but I don't want to take mine apart to find out!

Bill in FtL

Brass against brass.  Not a good setup.  C.W.  they are just scared up.  I am familiar with oilite bearings and these are as you figured just thin brass.

I get a few each week to work on.  The next time I get a steam loco, I will add what I see on this post.

Time to buy mth instead of lionel in the future 

Brass against brass.  Not a good setup.  C.W.  they are just scared up.  I am familiar with oilite bearings and these are as you figured just thin brass.

Thanks.

Wow! I have one of those. I had no idea you were supposed to oil the axels. Recommended oil and applicator? 

(Didn't help my manual was for the GP7 and they don't have the manual for the GP38 online).

Anyone assemble a list of engines effected?

those wheels look very rusty for a week old locomotive.

"

Time to buy mth instead of lionel in the future "

Great sense of humor!  Heard a rumor that only Lionel products have problems.  Is that true?

Seriously, those wheels and axle look corroded or contaminated in some way. Looks like they were at the bottom of the Gowanus Canal for a few years.  I own five LC+ locos, an admittedly small sample, and none of the wheels look anything like these.  Wonder if the owner ran it for

24-72 hours straight by accident, then dropped it in some bleach?  Just one possibility .

While it is a Lionel product, I doubt Lionel specified 'make as cheap as possible' to the Chinese. Lionel was most likely unaware of the manufacturing change, so lets not pile it on. There is only one answer to the production problems, bring it back to the good old USA. Otherwise we as a consumer are just going to have to live with it. Quantity, not quality is number one over there.