What was your worst engine disassembly experience?

Just took the shell off a PS-3 SD-40 and the wiring was all over the place. Many extra connectors, guess it is a universal harness. Wires to cab lights and markers connected to the board. Was looking for a bad wire but in the mess of wiring it was difficult. Tough to tuck everything back into the shell and easy to pinch or break a wire, on reassembly.  As a comparison,  Took the shell of a PS-2 loco and all the wiring was tied down in a neat bundle and all lighting to the cab and markers was done with spring contacts to the  printed circuit on the frame. Tons of room inside the shell, easy to reassemble.

Lionel postwar scouts are tempermental at best. they either work or don't.

I tell people that want them fixed that if they don't run, your better off spending your $$$$$$ on another loco.

Just about anything old American Flyer.  Talk about PITA.  G

LMAO man. Thanks, best essay so far!

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

 

My lionel #18117 F-3 from the LTI days (1993) just take ONE screw from the front of the cab then whole body comes off for easy service. Take 7 screws takes both motors and trucks and roller pick up assemblies and finally E-unit comes out. 10 min job if taking your time, even shorter to put it back together !!!! Its the easiest diesel I ever worked on!!!

 

the woman who loves the S.F.5011,2678,2003,200

Tiffany

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the TMCC cranes.  I had to take mine apart to fix a blown board.  You can't put it upside down to get to the screws because you will screw up the rigging.  I have to put it on the edge of my bench and work from underneath to get to the screws.  6 screws for the cab.  Then when you lift off the shell you have to be careful with the antenna wire.  Its connected to the top cab flap which is about as delicate as fine china.  I'm surprised I have not destroyed the tiny hinges on that.

 

The other fun one is the TMCC trackmobile.  The front coupler on mine gets stuck in the open position.  The casting is bad.  I got a replacement coupler.  I tried to take it apart but the wires are twisted and wound so tight, I never got it far enough apart to get to the coupler.

Before I retired, the locomotive I hated to see come into the shop was the Lionel SD-80/90. You couldn't get at anything without having to cut tie wraps off a bunch of wire bundles. And when you were done, you had to get everything rewrapped and in exactly the place it was from the factory, or the shell would not go back on.

 

The S2/S4's weren't so bad once I figured out to use heavy toothpicks to hold the tabs back when getting the cab end off. It was also a bit disconcerting to discover the front and rear motors on the Lionel U-30C were not interchangeable.

 

 

Worst experience was an MTH shrouded 4+4+4+4 T-1.  Tough to get apart, and when I attempted to put it back together, I found out why.  The shell was warped and the screw holes would not line up.  Clamped the shell in a vice, heated it forever with a hair drier, pushed and pulled it until the screw holes finally lined up, (sort-of).  Put the screws back in, and sold it on eBay.

 

quote:

Lionel postwar scouts are tempermental at best. they either work or don't.

I tell people that want them fixed that if they don't run, your better off spending your $$$$$$ on another loco.

 

I find that most people want their trains fixed, even when told that the cost of the repair would exceed the value of the train.
While Scout motors aren't the easiest thing to work on, having the Lionel Service manual pages make the job possible. (Olsens has them posted online with free access)
The drive wheels usually need to be removed, so I don't think I'd try to make a repair without a wheel puller and press.

I vote for the Legacy Atlantic, the Lindbergh model with whistle smoke.  It's crammed in there so tight that you have to dress the wires just right to get the boiler back on!  There isn't a place you could put a small thimble anywhere in there, they used ALL the space.  I've had a few of them apart, and it's always a treat to try to arrange the wiring so you can get it back together again!

 

A Lionel  1946 "726" which has the dual worm gear and wheel sets that all come out.

Could mot figure out why it would make so much noise running after taken apart several times and finally figured the motor itself had too much slop so it sits on shelf.

 

My other same year 726 runs like a top and can run at a nice slow speed .

The early model 675 and 2025 baldwin wheel type where a challenge at first until Greenburgs operating and repair mnaual was read on how to remove the motor now its easy.

These also run wonderfully .

 

Have several Mth engines that scare me because of the electronic boards and would have to be taken in if a board where to get quirky.

But the cruise control and sounds are enjoyable.

 

 

I second the early 675/2025 locos. They are not necessarily hard to disassemble, but can be tricky. Since these are my favorite postwar locos, I have have plenty of experience taking them apart for cleaning and service. 

Once, I opened up a Dorfan 3920 "Loco Builder" engine. That was stupid. These have no screws whatsoever. Everything - wheels, gears, field, armature, lights, wire harness - is keyed into the two-piece body casting. Kind of like reassembling a giant e-unit, or maybe a Scout. As if it were not hard enough to simultaneously align all these loose-fitting, wobbly bits and get them into the shell, I am trying to do it without actually touching the whole business any more than absolutely necessary, for fear of damaging the patina with my sweaty hands. What a nightmare. One of these days, I will post pictures. It did go back together, but it still doesn't run. Oh, and these were designed to be disassembled and reassembled - by kids! Right.

The Thomas the Tank Engine loco was a serious pain in rear. Not sure why since its a stupidly simple loco but it drove me nuts

Lionel scale F3s. Trying to change out couplers I found many of the tiny 2mm phillips screws in the truck assembly were loctited in. Heat would not break them free. What was Lionel thinking?

 

Pete

Lionel S4 switcher engine. Tabs break off easy on the cab and got watch front door when you take shell off. You will loose the hinges very easy and so tight in there got to have wires in right place and smoke funnel too.

Ever try replacing the battery in the MTH triplex? Not very easy.

 

x 2. Those Scout engines were just not designed for service. I am pretty good at servicing but when I tried to fix the only Scout in my collection, I got frustrated trying to get it to run correctly and threw it in the garbage. That all in one eunit/motor assembly is just not repair friendly. It looks like those low end engines were designed to be thrown away at the end of their useful life.  

I did take a Lionel scout apart once...........

and then said, "what did I do that for"??????

For postwar, other than trying to fix a Scout motor (I'll bet I have more parts on my attic floor than Gregg has on his basement floor) for which I finally put a 2034 motor in, my biggest challenge has been my 2035 (same as 675?). It is a real trick to work on. I remember years ago reading an article about repair of postwar trains and the author specifically mentioned the 2035 as the most difficult.

I find it interesting that several people have written that the 675 / 2025 /2035 are difficult to service. What is challenging on that engine?

The old Scout isn't that difficult to take apart, but I concur with the others, it's basically impossible to fix that silly internal E-Unit if it doesn't work right.  I could never figure out why it malfunctions, I even split the motor case on one and looked everything over.  I don't work on them anymore, my fix is the trash can as well!

 

The very first one that I opened up....I was very nervous. Probably took me a day to two to get up the nerve start on the project. Now, no problem.

Worse Engine disassembly experience?

 

Bachmann On30 Porter. I took it apart and rebuilt it to resemble a Forney. A saddle tank Forney. After awhile I took it apart again to try making NOT a saddle tank.

I kind of lost my taste for On30 about the same time and the little loco still sits in pieces.

 

Then there was my father-in-law. Not the same kind of engine, but still a bad experience, for my mother-in-law....

One winter my father-in-law decided the engine in one of their cars needed rebuilt. Being winter in Ohio, and not having a shop building in which to work, he removed said engine and somehow managed to get it into the living of their house! He rebuilt it right there in the comfort of their living room!

 

I used to rebuild motorcycles in my apartment in college. I even hung some plastic over the entrance to the dinette and used it for painting. One year we hung Christmas ornaments on a BSA 650 in the living room. Fortunately there were no wives or live-in girlfriends to object - there were three of us and we all rode motorcycles. 

To do an ERR upgrade to a Rich Yoder GE 44 tonner, Electro-couplers and sound.

Hopefully, he put down some old newspaper to catch the oil.   

when Dad gave me his trains, his 6110 hadn't run right for a while. newb I was I took it apart, saw quickly I had no idea, and it got shipped off to Dean at Braussers and it had run great ever since. 

 I had always heard the 675 was bad to take apart, but it's as easy as any other steamer I have.

The K-Line Porter is another one of those really PITA locomotives, right up there with the K-Line Plymouth.

For me it was tedious but not really hard except the first time, the postwar 671, 681,736, 2020 now those for me are simple as they have a few less screws and really simple to remove the body off the chassis.

 

My lionel legacy s-2.  I broke more tabs and such taking that apart I should be incarcerated!  Thankfully the s-2 did not need all those tabs and run fine today.

Fred

AtlasO RS-1 was time consuming to take apart to replace LED headlight and reassemble,electronics and shell interior tight tolerance had to be diligent not to pinch wiring at reassembly.

Plus 1 Matt.  That was a poor design.  The innards of our Thomas are in a bag on the workbench and Thomas is now a dummy engine.  Every time I go to York or Allentown I try to find a used one cheap.

 

Ron

 

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

 

Sadly, Lionel has made a lot of JUNK trains since 1945 to now. You just pay for what you get !!! I learned a hard lesson about that. I guess it always pays to spend good money for better Lionel trains.   Lionel makes trains for everyone's budget.  I was a postwar collector then MPC, LTI.  I know Lionel also makes GOOD trains but they cost a lot. I have LTI era S.F. F-3 ABA set and they need some work to make them run good.  I guess that's the way it is in business world. 

 

the woman who loves the S.F.5011,2678,2003,200

Tiffany 

The Lionel pre war OO1 Hudson. Easy to take apart, a hump to get it back together again.

Lionel Santa Fe Dash 9. The glue for some of the interior detail had run down between the shell & the frame & basically bonded the two together & it was almost impossible to seperate them without breaking something or damaging the paint. All that fooling around just to repair a broken wire on a train that was brand new from the factory. 

For frustrating, my experience with prewar American Flyer 3/16ths O gauge steam engines ranks at the top.  A train museum that a friend of mine volunteered at got a donation of a large lot of Flyer 3/16ths O gauge trains (Challenger/Northerns, K-5, Hudson, Pennsy and Reading Atlantics). They'd sat for years, and hadn't been run in ages.  I volunteered to overhaul the engines as the museum wanted to have a running display.  I'd worked on some S gauge Flyer before, so I went ahead and plowed into the project (knowing full well that pesky linkage was a challenge to get lined up with all those tiny screws, and the reverse units that have caused Flyer guys to be known as table thumpers).

 

I decided to pop open a 572 Challenger/Northern first (always go for the top of the line).  I started to back out screws on the linkage, and watched as the boiler casting started to crumble.  Every screw yielded more crumbling - zinc pest (affectionately dubbed Dorfan's Disease by me) had struck.  The cab was so affected it snapped anywhere pressure was applied, and basically turned to dust.  On to the tender - warped frame, missing/crumbling truck sideframes, shell was also crumbling and the end caps were toast as well.  I managed to salvage the stamped parts like the drawbar, handrails, and truck frames (unobtainium as there's no repros made, one has to buy junker tenders to get them).  

 

I salvaged several Challenger/Northerns, K-5s, a Hudson, and some Reading and a single Pennsy Atlantic.  I had to buy a lot of repro lead/trailing truck wheels, bolierfronts, reverse unit drums and fingers, and numerous diecast tender truck sides.  I even managed to get a 571 Challenger to operate using the RDC mechanism (a relay that worked like a Lionel whistle relay with a jolt of DC controlling the reverse action so the engine would keep running in the same direction until dc was applied; the relay has a screwy spring tensioner that has to be just so to work properly, and perfectly level track so the relay didn't trigger accidentally), and a couple tender chugger mechanisms.

 

In hindsight, I would have suggested just doing cosmetic repairs and displaying the collection of Flyer trains.  I didn't live close enough to maintain the trains so they'd run properly, and they were quirky enough that a repair person really needs to understand their odd needs.  The resulting pieces were all solid, and made for interesting conversation pieces.  I caught the bug, and have a small fleet of solid Flyer 3/16th O gauge pieces as well.  They look great lugging a long string of Marx 3/16ths O gauge tin litho cars - definitely not for folks who don't like working on pieces which can crumble before their eyes, and don't mind having a big junk box full of Flyer donors for shells and other parts.

My Legacy GP9 is/was packed full of electronics.  When I removed the shell so I could repaint it I took out the smoke unit at the same time.  That gave me some space but it was still hard to get the number boards/lights back in and the shell back in place.

 

3rd Rail E7, I have a loose roller assembly.  Not so hard to get the shell off, but once inside I can't fix the problem because the wiring is soldered to the screw.  How do you tighten the screw with a wire soldered to it?!?!?!  I also removed the smoke unit and that freed up a lot of room.

 

The easiest engine I have worked on is my Railking 2-8-0.  4 screws and it practically falls apart.

 

I've had my Williams brass 611 apart so many times in the past month I believe I can field-strip it blindfolded .  Nothing was really broken, I was either trying to reduce the noise level coming from the drive train or experimenting with PS2 tach tapes.  I do believe I increased some muscle mass in my arms from lifting this beast.

I've got a 1966 Scout set.  It is my first Lionel set that my father bought when I was 4 years old.

 

I remember reading that a service bulletin from Lionel said to just replace the loco rather than trying to fix it.

 

Once I found out about that, I stopped running it with regularity sometime around 1998.

 

Fred