A friend has one of the blue Menard diesels and recently it began running slowly, with limited top speed. We took it apart today and checked the trucks and drive motors separately. All seemed not to have any binding issues. We also looked for gear issues and they seem to be ok also. We decided to run it without the cab on it and noticed the front drive motor was smoking, although it was running, at slow speed. Two questions:
1) any idea what could be smoking inside one of these can motors?
2) Is there a source of spare parts or specifications for Menards locomotives? (I sent an email to Menards last week asking this question and no response so far.) I did not find other threads with this information either.
Thanks in advance for suggestions.
