Lionel F3 front motor stall

Swap the motors and see if the symptom follows the motor or stays with the front truck. That will alert you as to where the problem is.

Larry

Did you actually remove the motor and clean out all the old caked grease from the worm gear compartment (obviously replacing with new)?

I'd bet someone disassembled the motor truck & put the worm shaft bearings back in wrong.

Ok, I think I got it handled.

I dug into the gearbox and removed the petrified grease, and lubed with new. 

I found a bit of corrosion on one of the motor solder joints, cleaned that up.

Cleaned and greased the rear gearbox.

3m pad on the copper truck plate and bottom side of the motor mounting pad, and bottom of engine frame on front and back truck.

Disassembled e unit and cleaned fingers and drum.

Cleaned wheels again, pick up roller, and track with Deoxit.

Fired her up and away she went. I still do have a little bit of issues, but for almost a 70 year old machine I’m happy with it. 

Questions:

 My e unit buzzes pretty good at slow speed, is there anything I can do to get rid of the buzzing?

The horn relay gives a chirp of the horn when bumping around certain parts of the track. Is there anything I can do to make it less sensitive. I tried putting electrical tape between the solenoid and metal flap switch, but it made the horn very hard to blow, and finally it stopped completely. I’m afraid to bend the contact, seems pretty flimsy.

The e unit control lever hits the turnout switch cover (1121 switches) when it goes by and turns the e unit off. Is this normal on O27 track? It only hits the Bakelite covers, not the cast ones.

This is my first F3, and I’m impressed...what a beautiful train.

Glad you got the 2356 running smoothly.  The 1121 switches predate the F3's so there may be a design conflict that's causing the E-unit lever to hit the switch housing. You might try bending the lever in a little. The F3's are pretty hefty engines for running on O-27 track, especially with the older 1121 switches. The newer 1122 switches had more clearance to accommodate the larger engines and cars Lionel was coming out with.

If the relay contacts are too close together, bumps in the track will cause them to touch. You can bend them apart. Start with a slight bend, test and repeat.

As for the e-unit lever contacting the switch. If that is indeed the case, you can trim the lever length. 

Roger

The horn relay will "chirp" at times if the loco loses power for a moment. This can be caused by dirty track and/or wheels, or bad connections between tracks.

'E'-unit buzzing is normal and a function of its' design. Lock the 'E'-unit in forward and the buzzing will stop.

Larry

TrainLarry posted:

The horn relay will "chirp" at times if the loco loses power for a moment. This can be caused by dirty track and/or wheels, or bad connections between tracks.

'E'-unit buzzing is normal and a function of its' design. Lock the 'E'-unit in forward and the buzzing will stop.

Larry

This ^

Ok thank you. Will clean the track and wheels again, and slightly bend the tab of the relay.

There was a fair bit of corrosion around the base of the horn relay. Not on the bottom side, on top where the winding sits with the copper washers. I’m sure this isn’t helping matters. I had to use an electrolysis bath on the mounting bracket/battery holder because of corrosion around the top rivet. These horn whistles are gold plated I guess, cause they sure are heavy on the wallet.

I saw a video on YouTube where a guy said he eliminated the e unit buzz, but never said how he did it

On my horizontal motored F-3 units, I ran a separate ground wire from one motor to the other motor and then to the frame. That eliminated one motor hiccuping on my locos.

There was one of those wires on there, but I took it off and things improved somewhat, so I left it off.

The e unit control lever hits the turnout switch cover (1121 switches) when it goes by and turns the e unit off. Is this normal on O27 track? It only hits the Bakelite covers, not the cast ones.

Your horizontal motored F3 was not designed to run on 027 track. As you've discovered, there is a known clearance issue with 027 switch covers.
The later F3's with vertical motors do better on clearance.

RoyBoy,

Can you tell me where you attached your extra ground wires for your motors please. I have one motor that still hiccups every so often. It’s not a lot, but just enough to be annoying.

Asymair95 posted:

RoyBoy,

Can you tell me where you attached your extra ground wires for your motors please. I have one motor that still hiccups every so often. It’s not a lot, but just enough to be annoying.

On each horizontal motor there is a lug riveted to the motor with the field wire soldered to  it. I soldered a flexible wire to one motor at that lug, ran that to the other motor and soldered it. Then attached a second wire to one motor and ran that to an internal toothed lug screwed to a tapped and threaded hole drilled in the chassis.

 This hard wired system gives a perfect ground all the time.

Thank you sir, I will give that a try and report back.