Problem with American Models' S gauge Trainmaster flex coil power trucks

This sounds more like a mechanical bind with the drivetrain.

I would pop the body off and see if anything inside is interfering or rubbing when the locomotive goes into a curve.

Rusty

Unfortunately, same issue with shell off and no interferences that I can see.

Got me then.

The only HiRail six wheel AM units I have are the PA's and they run fine on R20.  Also, they don't have the sprung trucks like the Train Master.

Rusty

I have two Trainmasters modified for TMCC/Railsounds 5 by Ed. They are running fine. I can pull 6 AM passenger cars up a 1.8% grade with a 36"R curve. I do not have a layout currently operating with any 20"R curves but 4 years ago when I did they worked ok on the SHS 20"R curves.

Any chance it has a bad or missing traction tire?

Chuck

Ed posts on the forum from time to time, I will send him a message to see if he can make a suggestion or two on here, he is a certified Lionel and MTH technician with a lot of experience with AMs equipment.   

Ben 

AmFlyer posted:

I have two Trainmasters modified for TMCC/Railsounds 5 by Ed. They are running fine. I can pull 6 AM passenger cars up a 1.8% grade with a 36"R curve. I do not have a layout currently operating with any 20"R curves but 4 years ago when I did they worked ok on the SHS 20"R curves.

Any chance it has a bad or missing traction tire?

The tires look fine but I'll try replacing them to see what happens.

NotInWI posted:

Chuck

Ed posts on the forum from time to time, I will send him a message to see if he can make a suggestion or two on here, he is a certified Lionel and MTH technician with a lot of experience with AMs equipment.   

Ben 

Thanks. As another clue, the 'flex coil' springs seem really stiff compared to my FP7.

Chuck, can you call me 847-727-0857........Ed

Hello Ed. I managed spend a few hours on it today and got it working well.  I discovered a few other problems too (not related to Ed's great work!), but got them all under control.

Great to hear. Enjoy it!

Glad you were able to get it to work so now it is time to have fun with it!

You worked on it , but what did you do to fix your problem ?

     Bob

A few things:

1. I trimmed 2 spirals off of each of the springs above the square bushings of the middle wheelsets (the ones with tires) only. These seemed to be causing only 2 of the 3 wheelsets per truck to be making firm contact with the track. However, while there was improvement, there was still a problem in the R20 turns, and now a new problem…
2. After doing #1 above, it stalled on a turnout. Then I realized I was too focused on the wheels. Right there in front of me was a key issue. There was a thick wire tie that wrapped around the can motor, some wires above the can, and under the chassis (through slits cut into the chassis). This tie, perhaps over time, had drooped and was interfering through turnouts. I cut the tie off. This was major improvement through turns and turnouts, but still not perfect.
3. I found that the rear wheelset on the rear truck had zero lateral play. The problem was that the cylindrical plastic extending from the sides of the gear along the axis were too large. I filed them down just a bit until the wheelset could move laterally as much as all the other wheelsets. 

I suspect the previous owner was using higher rail track than Fastrack has and therefore didn’t need to address 1, 2 and 3. 

1. It stopped receiving commands from my CAB-2 a couple of times while testing the solutions above. I noticed that the antennae had become tucked under a TMCC board. I moved it to be just under the shell’s ceiling.

All is good for now.  It's my first Trainmaster, and I really like it especially with TMCC and Railsounds.

Interesting in that I never had to trim springs on any of the American Model engines and was wondering if anyone else ran into this problem and is this something we should be aware of?

As for the tie wrap did you try to tighten it before cutting it? As long as the double sided tape is holding the motor in place you shouldn't have any problems .

I am a little puzzled about the rear wheel set and the lateral movement. I use original S-Helper flex track on my layout and you would think that it would have given me a problem during the test runs after the conversion. Is it possible something shifted causing this and filing it is masking another problem?  Wonder if this too is something we need to be aware of.  

Ed

Ed, I just checked my two Trainmasters. All 6 wheelsets are riding on the rails. All the wheelsets have some amount of side play, the center ones have more. The engines run fine, pull an AM 6 car passenger train. The smallest radius I have is 30", the track is the SHS/MTH flex. 

Tom, thanks for that info. Maybe this is an isolated problem but can't figure out what happened.

Happy Father's day!