Recent purchase lionel 2035 in need of restoration. Cleaned motor bench test ran great put back in shell and it ran very short distance and shorted at front of pilot as i saw a small spark.
I shut power off and hand pushed and could see front of pilot touching track.
Took it off put in vise and with a couple of taps with hammered the front end went back up nice and straight as far as my eye could tell hand pushed on track again and it was fine applied power and ran it for 45 minutes with no problems.
When weather warms will strip and re paint the shell and in mean time will rebuild smoke unit to liquid unit.
Forgot to add in cleaning i saw something on underside of large round magnet behind wheel axle removed it and it turned out to be about a 5/8 long skinny tacking nail.
