Recently I purchased a few, let's call them "new old stock" items. One of these I purchased from a dealer and the other was purchased from a random person. The only important detail here was they were two completely unrelated people. Technically the items weren't "new", maybe "unused" is a better word. Both were F3/7 B-units and had very similar failures - made years apart. Unit 1 is TMCC equipped from the 2007 catalog and showed zero signs of use. Box was in the outer shipper, I'd say easily P9, the shell and outward appearance of the locomotive was C9 or C10. No marks or our outwardly evident issues. Unit 2 has Legacy, and is from the 2017 catalog. This one, sold as a customer return with one described issue was also in near new shape. Box P9+ with shipper and shell was C8 - only because part of the shell which is glued on from the factory (the part of the shell that has the roof fans on it). In older versions of this, it was a snap in part, but in later versions it's glued. I include the ratings/descriptions mainly to say that neither of these looked to have been messed with by the users. Screw heads were black, no evidence of tampering etc.
Upon putting each locomotive on the tracks, they made a weird noise. It sounded like a grinding or slipping gear. Needless to say after testing each I opened them up. Both of them had the rear motor (the one without the tach) dangling by it's power wires. One had both screws loose and floating in the shell (hint check the roof magnets if you get a unit like this) and the other had one screw out and one hanging on by probably two threads. In both cases, it seems that the screws had stripped from the motor plate.
These weren't the only issues however. Both units also had some of the porthole windows hanging on by a blob of glue about the size of a pinhead and others completely loose in the shell. I would blame the users who handled these items for this failure, but other windows were completely intact with sufficient glue around the window flange.
The unit that came from the dealer (2017 era) also had the following issues... The electro-coupler was loose and the spring was bent and out of the channel that it usually sits in. Nearly every screw on the unit was not properly torqued down, and several had wiggled out to the point that it was visible upon inspection. And probably most distressingly, the heat shrink tubing around some of the high current wires was not "shrunk". It floated back and forth along the wire with no effort.
I bought both of these for very good prices from the auction website that shall remain nameless, and I got very good deals so I'm not complaining that I got "ripped off". The one from the dealer was a little more surprising because it was described to have only one issue - however it had many more (as detailed above). In their defense they did offer to refund my money, but I really just wanted the item for some of the parts for a project I was working on, and I rightly or wrongly I felt that since I made what I thought was a low-ball offer on an item that was returned (and he took it) that returning it might just result in someone else getting duped. Again, I only wanted some of the parts from it, which individually would have cost me more directly from Lionel.
Anyway, I wanted to point out the failures I found, specifically the loose screws, unshrunk heat-shrink, and the motor mount issues. I think the motor mount has either an insufficient amount of threads or is made of a metal that is too soft to support the motors weight. It's entirely possible that both of these items were mucked with by the previous owners, but they both failed in a very similar way. Additionally, the loose screws could be exacerbating that issue if the motor is loose from the start, it could just wiggle loose in shipping or after some use.
Maybe both of these were just made on a Friday at 4:59PM.
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