Lionel Product Video for SD70

I watched one to see what they were about. A legacy diesel, remove from the box and lube it immediately!

Always a good idea to check and lube if necessary, no matter who makes the locomotive...

Rusty

Thanks for the heads-up on the video.  The SD manual says to lightly grease the gears too.  No mention of that is made in this video and in the U33c video Mike says to not lube the gears at all - leave them dry.  However, the U33c manual also says to lightly grease them.  As a mechanical engineer I cringe at the thought of metal gears under load meshing along dry without lubrication and believe the manuals are correct.  I have sparingly applied Lubriplate 630-AA grease to the gears on my u-boat and SD.  I understand how the presence of that grease might attract dust and dirt from the layout, but no lube I believe is worse.  Besides this type of side-frame gear train has been around since the 50's and the lubrication of them has been recommended for decades.  BTW - we ran another new BNSD SD on our club layout last weekend (2 show weekends in a row) and it did the same thing as the new unit the previous weekend - sounds cut out when running over certain sections of less than perfect condition tracks.  Greater axle travel in the trucks to keep better contact with the rails would have helped avoid that as Carl T has pointed out.

One other point that everyone seems to miss is the pins/"axles" the spur gears themselves mount upon and rotate-no one ever mentions putting a drop of oil on them as well. They spin on a shaft; they should be oiled.......

D&H, yes, very good point!

Folks, I recommend lightly greasing the gears.  Also, I sent Carl T's writeup to the mechanical designers.

Jon: Thanks for bringing the SD70 recommendations from Carl to Lionel engineering's attention.

I have a new SD70 but haven't been able to run it yet. Hopefully Carl's recommendations make it into the next run of SD70s/U-33's etc.