Lionel F3's using plastic gears!

Well, if they are nylon gears instead of plastic they may be better than metal.  I've seen well-done nylon gears that are tough, quiet, and that last for years and years.

One can only hope that the plastic spur gears will hold up.  The old worm wheels certainly did not, and we all paid the price!  As for leveling your CC F3, use one half of a 1" key ring cut apart at the crossover section, and install this "C" section between the rear power truck and the frame.  Had to do this on every CC ever done, and I get 'em all.  I'd still like to know why Lionel has the front power truck jutting way out in front, when the dummy  front truck is in the correct position.  This  can be fixed too, but requires a little more time and tools.

What Lee says. Hopefully Delrin though. Much more stable and better lubricating properties compared to nylon. Nylon swells and gets brittle with age.

 

Pete

Well, if they are nylon gears instead of plastic they may be better than metal.  I've seen well-done nylon gears that are tough, quiet, and that last for years and years.

Try convincing those MPC guys with that statement. IF lionel has gone "back to the future with Delrin Nylon Plastic gears, what reassurances we as modelers have that this is no another MPC Gear issue in the making?

Hello guys and gals.....

 

Do the PWC and CC FM's and GG1's,GP-9's come with black plastic gears? 

 

The woman that loves the S.F.5011

Tiffany

HotBox: As regards the brushplate higher on the one motor and not the other: mine are high on both motors. If you look closely at the armatures in both, you should see that the lower brushplate has an armature that has the commutator sitting lower to the armature pole windings and the other higher one has the commutator that is much higher.  WHY??? I asked the Lionel people at the Ohio office and all I was told was that the production people were not answering any questions !!!!!  Also, I noticed on mine, that the bottom of the commutators were epoxied to the armature shafts.  I really can't believe that the Chinese could take a good pullmore motor and make such an abomination out of it, and for what???  All the more reason to bring Lionel Train manufacturing back to the  U S A  and quite all this foolishness with them re-inventing the wheel all the time!

          As goes the height difference, from front to back, see which one is the lower, and remove the truck, and then the truck top plate and adjust the nubs accordingly; either deeper to raise or flatten to lower and put it back together; never mind adding more  "Mickey Mouse parts"  to an icon because someone cannot read  an engineering sheet!

          I hadn't noticed the front truck extending out more forward on mine, but then, I have not used it too much yet.  I know that the Williams units have the front pilots extending out from their F-3's and they look really bad on the lighter painted units as opposed to plain black.   Dennis M.

None of this is a big surprise, the making of open frame, Pullmor motors has become a lost art.  That is why I am not too happy that the CC locomotives come with them.  Nostalgia is one thing, but I want my Lionel postwar inspired locomotives to run reliably, and in today's manufacturing environment, can motors and solid state electronics for sounds and reverse operation are the way to go.

 

It isn't just Lionel, MTH has the same situation with their conventional versions of Lionel tinplate locomotives.

 

Ed Boyle

 

Ed Boyle

Ed,

 

Are you suggesting that the MTH/Lionel Corp conventional tinplate engines are not of reliable quality?

 

Sunrise

Ken, what's been your personal experience with nylon/delrin gears?

 

All the locos that I have that use these gears have worked just fine, for many years.  They've held up pulling long consists and have been abused by jerky stops.

 

They are quieter than metal gears.

 

You've made your point on a couple threads.  Just wonderin?

Sunrise,

No that is not what I am suggesting.

 

I am stating that building the conventional versions of the MTH engines is harder to do than putting flywheel equipped, can motors in them, along with MTH's Proto 3 command/sound system.

 

It is actually less difficult to manufacture these units with 21st Century electronics and can motors than it is to reach back to the early 20th Century and reproduce the technology of the time.

 

That really should not be a surprise; very few people know how to make the older stuff, especially overseas.

 

An analogy is that, at present, we do not have the manufacturing facilities to reproduce gun barrels for the 16 inch guns on battleships, but we can manufacture supersonic jets that utilize "smart" munitions.  That is something that would not have been possible in the 1940s.

 

Ed Boyle

I'll tell it to you straight. Vintage open frame AC Pullmor motors used special steel laminations of a very low carbon content. The carbon content had to be low to achieve the needed magnetic efficiency. Those laminations need a special process to make and are expensive. Low carbon steel laminations must also be formed from new fresh steel made from iron ore and not from the cheap inferior quality scrap steel that the Chinese use. Chinese steel is garbage. Thats why the current CC motors run hot, and do not pull as well.  

Hello Dennis LaGrua............

 

That's very interesting......... I never knew that about the "low carbon steel" needed for magnetic effciency .  The chinese are well known for making junk and they are GOOD at it.

 

the woman who loves the S.F.5011

Tiffany

the only thing that matters is that the worm wheel is not plastic. I agree 100%, we all paid the price for that MPC mistake. I had my favorite engine (the MPC 8650) shread up its own worm wheel. If the vertical play on these set screw motors is not right, you're done!

 

And the chinese do produce junk..no doubt about that. the mabuchis and electronic boards may be the way to go, but the level of quality and craftmanship in a postwar USA motor is something that people do like to hang on to.

Looks like Im buying Williams

 

Sunrise

If it is any consolation, I have seen a total of 6 F-3's in Lionel service that had issues with driveline components. I challenge you to sear out the gears in these new Conventional Classic diesels! If it were a problem we would about it (in service). Mike Lionel

hello guys and gals..........

 

I had MPC era #8250 GP-9 back in 1972 and the white spur nylon center gear always comes off the shaft and have put it back on number of times but keeps coming off.  Nylon gears are great in "N" and "H.O" scale engines but NOT in "O" gauge engines due to weight.  I refused to buy any "O" gauge engines with nylon gears no matter how cheap it is.  Would any of you buy a car with plastic gears in the transmission?, NOT me but maybe Mikado would.

 

the woman who loves the S.F.5011

Tiffany

Mikado,

What about longevity?  Also,  how much is Lionel saving by not using metal gears?  Its not like these engines are budget items! In one thread....folks were disappointed to find plastic gears in a RMT engine that you can currently get for under 50.00.  I'm no expert in materials..but when manufacturers make it a point to list metal gears in the list of features...the purchaser of these products can't help to feel like they have an overpriced and inferior product.  Like I said...I'm no expert in materials and I suspect that 99% of folks on this forum aren't as well. However, I don't really think that matters....the issue here is perception...and unfortunately...perception is reality.  I suspect that we're going to see an enhanced curiosity in post and prewar trains due to the perception of inferior materials, reliabilty of electronics and availability of parts.

 

Thanks!

Sunrise

I have a paper shredder here at home that we have used quite a lot each week for many years.  It has a big nasty motor and grinds and growls a lot.  It has nylon gears and seems to be no worst for wear after more than a decade of its "daily grind" than when new.  

I would not be concerned about the use of modern plastic gears. If the correct 'plastic' is used for the application, it can have higher strength, quieter running and better wear performance than metal gearing. Modern materials such as Stanyl(R) are used in many high performance applications. Even with metal gears, using the correct material is most important.

Nicole,

 

Your point is so very true...That's why I said I was no material expert. Perhaps the manufacturers can start marketing the benefits, if any, of advanced materials in the description.  This may help with the knee jerk reaction of "if its not metal its inferior and cheaply made".

 

Regards,

Sunrise

Sunrise,

 

Good point.

 

Ed Boyle

Lotsa luck raising F3 nubs that aren't there!  You'll have to adjust the rear truck on the CC F3 if you're going to have it match the height of the dummy A unit.  Show me a better way to raise the frame over the rear truck on the powered A unit, and I'll try it out.  Lionel has had several years to fix this and could care less.  CC is something they wish would just dry up and blow away.  Today's Lionel is into mind control..."you will buy our NASCAR balogna, and love it !"  Ten years ago, our thoughts were given some consideraton, but today....HAH !

The only locomotives I have run extensively are my original PW units manufactured during the 50’s by Lionel. I just pulled my 1957 2379 Rio Grande F3 out of storage and checked the spur gears and they are well used, made of metal, and show no signs of wear. By the time we got into the MPC era and plastic gears, I had acquired many more locomotives, had less time to run them, and consequently had fewer usage hours on any particular locomotive so I do not have any “lifetime test data”. However, my engineering intuition (I’m a retired electronics engineer) and common sense tells me, plastic is less resistant to wear, and metal in most cases will be superior in the long run for our very heavy O Gauge locomotives. If you don’t believe that, you are entitled to your own opinion but you will have to provide me some hard engineering data to convince me that plastic, any kind of plastic, nylon, delron or whatever, is superior to the postwar metal gears on the power trucks. As far as being quiet, I don't have any pullmore motored locos, postwar or modern, that I consider to be quiet!

That being said, during the early days of this Forum, I believe we discussed these issues many times and plastic never came out the winner. I also have an in-law who makes his living repairing trains. When we get together we have long discussions about every aspect of our trains, especially the reparability and reliability. He has mentioned many horror stories about the use of plastic gears failing on the power trucks. They just don’t hold up as well as the hardened metal gears if you run your locomotives a lot and that certainly comes as no surprise to me. I’m not sure which of the three different gears (internal worm, external drive spur, external idler spur) on the power trucks had the highest failure rate when they were made of plastic, but I believe on various locomotives made through the years, Lionel has experimented with plastic on all three. With the current IC F3, only the small idler spur gears are plastic. Of course, if your locomotives are primarily shelf queens, then there are no gear issues.

Anyway, that’s my take on the plastic gear issue. I would prefer the same postwar metal gears on the modern stuff. They worked extremely well back then and are still going strong today!

Regards,
Ken

 

Since MPC got brought into this discussion, the MPC era F-3's were made with

nylon idler gear, and pinion gear, and a brass worm gear.

 

The earliest of these were manufactured by the remaining staff in Hillside, with production shifting to the Mt. Clemens factory in 1974.

 

Ken

I don't mind plastic or nylon that much for the following reason:  if a plastic gear fails, I don't think that it will mess us the other stuff it meshes with.  If a metal gear fails, it may burr, and foul up the other parts. 

That is a good point that I had forgotten about.  I had a Railking Big Boy that, near as could be figured out, dropped a tooth from a gear and that really messed up other things, was never the same after, somehow, dropping a tooth from a gear.  New gears were put in and it ran but never as tight and smooth as before. 

 

Again, I have never had any issues with appropriately sized nylon gears.  Cheap plastic ones are another thing entirely, but nylon and plastic made for gearing are quite good and long lasting.

Lionel, been in business how many years? Maybe, someday they will get it right.

Just so you all know, Nylon (TM) is a plastic. It is one family of plastic materials that is available along with many other engineering thermoplastics which offer greatly varying performance properties and cost.

 

Bob

 

(TM) of DuPont

I've got 40+ year old O gauge AMT and KMT F units that use nylon gears in their drive train - never had a bit of trouble with them.  They have 7 pole, open frame Pittman motors that have far more torque than currently made can motors.  If nylon gears are junk, those Pittman motors would have chewed them up and spit them out long ago.  I've run those AMT engines for hours on end, with no wear or damage to the gears in sight during overhaul time.  

You'll see plastic used far more than it is now in car transmissions.  Weight saving and heat tolerance are driving companies like Dupont to develop new materials for use in transmissions and other areas where metal has been traditionally used:  http://www2.dupont.com/Plastic...ocus_issue18_02.html