And infuriating.
In my opinion, they are overengineered. As someone who used to own a couple of Volvo 200s, I know too well what overengineering is like on the consumer end. When everything works properly, it's amazing.
When it doesn't, well, that's a problem. In the case of my Volvos, a 264 sedan and a 245 estate, the problems were various. For the 245, it was the electrical system, with redundant fuel pump relays that were prone to failure at inopportune moments, like the expressway.
The 264, though, was a nightmare. The motor, designed by Peugeot and Volvo, was frequently prone to oil blockages, due to how narrow the channels that the lubricant had to pass through. Also, the automatic transmissions for the production year 1978 (Borg-Warner) were high maintenance - when properly maintained, they'd last forever. My car was parked in 1989 and wasn't driven again until 2006 when I got it. To say the least, the transmission was not properly maintained. But I digress.
My point is that sometimes overengineering produces products that work properly as long as they are cared for. In the case of old toy and model trains, chances are really good that they weren't.
The GP7 diesel came to me in pieces, and after shelling out a few more dollars I managed to get it sort of running. But it's anemic and jerky. I still have yet to properly rewire the chassis. Lionel designed these things to extremely tight tolerances, and the wiring soldered into place, which means that parts that would eventually fail (and they will) required taking the unit apart, or to a Lionel Service Center. On mine, I soldered new leads to the trucks, and will use twist on connectors.
The other locomotive arrived to me as parts as well, the Lionel 0-4-0T. As before, it uses a belt/band to get the power from the motor down to the driveshaft and to the wheels. This is the second Lionel belt driven steamer I have, the other is their 2-4-2, which runs, albeit much like the GP7.
However, the tolerances in both cases for the steamers is even tighter.
While I was able to use some #10 elastic bands that I had on hand from motorizing my Athearn F7 for the Geep, the same would not work for the steamers. The path that the elastic has to take is too close, and the slightest bulge will lock it up.
For the 2-4-2 (which needs its own entry, as it is such an odd looking locomotive), it took a few hours and specially ordered elastic to do the job. I still needed to properly quarter the wheels, which took a lots of trial and error, but I did manage to get the wee beastie running.
This 0-4-0T is not being as gracious.
It is still binding somewhere. The couple of times when I thought it would run properly it did so for a moment, and again, it would stall.
I have little doubt that the problem is in the rods somewhere, but with each stall it stretches that belt even further, and I am concerned that it might soon get to the point where it is too loose to work properly.
After having worked on these I think I understand why Lionel's first attempt at H0 didn't sell that well. Compared to simpler designs from Athearn, and even their arch rival Marx, they were too prone to problems.
Which is sad, really. They looked great.
No comments:
Post a Comment