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 Kato HO P42s at one year...
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swchief3
Passenger

USA
142 Posts

Posted - 11/20/2014 :  23:03:51  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
I had intended to post an update before now, but life intervened. I had to move, among other things, so I've been pretty preoccupied.

Anyway, my oldest Kato P42s are now over a year old... already. Running with these oldest units has been up and down, and I almost threw in the towel a few times, because they were really slowing down. They were losing speed big time, and they were drawing more current than they had before. The newer units were still doing pretty well, but my concern was with the older units, because I was trying to see how these things would hold up in the long run.

I scrounged around on the internet for some solutions and/or some other user reviews, etc., and found a post a gentleman had made on the NMRA British Region forum. This gentleman had observed that his twin trucks were not always running at the same speed, which was an issue I was having. He installed some small wood wedges under the rear pilot, and found that his trucks matched speeds better than before. I tried something similar with my engines. I just tore off small pieces of an old business card, and placed them in between the metal weights and the plastic beams where the trucks mount, one piece in front and one in the rear. The difference was nothing short of AMAZING! These oldest engines perked right up, and ran like gangbusters. Much more power, much better speed, reduced current draw, and consistent running. Each engines' trucks seemed to match better, and the units themselves matched much better than before.

I applied this fix to the rest of the fleet, and I am just blown away by the results. Not only is the engines' performance improved, but also the ride height is better. At first, I thought the Kato model's height was right, and the Athearn model was too tall. When I put the shims in the Katos, it boosted them up just a touch, and I realized that they'd been sitting a bit too low... to my eye, anyway. The change of height made the units look even better and more realistic than before.

Nothing but plusses, so far, with the installation of the paper shims. I'd tried just about everything else, but had never thought of putting shims in. So, thank you, Mike Ruby, for the idea!

On the down side, though, I've got one unit with untraceable binding in its rear truck. I've checked everything multiple times, but can't find anything obvious. I'll probably just have to give in and replace the truck.

I hope Kato will release more HO P42s. Last time I talked to them, which was awhile ago, they had no immediate plans to do any more. I hope they change their minds, and will do another run. I hope they'll do the older paint schemes.

Thanksgiving is a week away. For those who celebrate, have a happy one!

Edited by - swchief3 on 06/15/2015 02:11:30

swchief3
Passenger

USA
142 Posts

Posted - 11/24/2014 :  21:59:01  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
The engine that had what I thought was some untraceable truck binding is still giving me fits. There's nothing wrong with the drives on either truck, as they rolled very freely with worm assemblies removed. The motors themselves were showing signs of binding and/or inconsistent running. They'd spin fine in one direction, but would tighten up and whine the other way. Unsure if the motors themselves were problematic, or if the worm assemblies may have compromised them somehow.

I'll just replace those motors at some point, and we'll see what happens. So far, so good, though, with the other engines, after adding those paper shims.
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swchief3
Passenger

USA
142 Posts

Posted - 11/25/2014 :  18:05:54  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Problem unit is AMTK 188, the third unit I got. Front motor has now failed.
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swchief3
Passenger

USA
142 Posts

Posted - 12/16/2014 :  00:14:11  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
AMTK 188 now has a new front motorized truck, and the loco is doing fine. Just had it on the road for a full-length trip, running lead, and it ran great. Hopefully, no more motors will fail. The shim trick is still working.
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swchief3
Passenger

USA
142 Posts

Posted - 12/30/2014 :  19:27:26  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
The pattern with these engines is getting clearer by the day, and it's now starting to repeat itself. Now, my newest engines, AMTK 156 and AMTK 145, are losing power and slowing down, same as AMTK 68, the first one I got. AMTK 156's rear truck, which has already been replaced once, is now acting up. Cleaning tracks and wheels did not help. Shims are no longer making a difference. This setback gets me back to thinking these things are not going to last.

These trucks don't match, even with the shims, and that has got to be causing a constant tug-of-war within each individual locomotive. If one truck is pushing and the other is dragging, eventually, one of those motors will fail. I've had this happen at least four times now, since acquiring the first of these units over a year ago.

The twin-motor idea is a decent idea on paper, and an excellent idea in theory, but my experiences indicate that the concept isn't working very well in real life. Each time a truck fails, it's $50.00+ to replace. If both trucks fail, then, of course, it's $100+. Given the pattern I'm seeing, these engines are going to cost a fortune to keep up and running.
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swchief3
Passenger

USA
142 Posts

Posted - 01/10/2015 :  20:55:52  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Another motorized truck has failed. AMTK 161, my second oldest Kato P42, has lost its front truck. This unit's rear truck has already been replaced once, and now the front truck has failed.

I have now retired ALL of my Kato P42s. Can't sell them, because they will no doubt fail with (a) potential new owner(s). I will be sending some feedback to Kato very soon.

I'm glad I held on to my Athearn P40/P42 fleet! Never thought I'd say that...

Edited by - swchief3 on 01/10/2015 20:58:28
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swchief3
Passenger

USA
142 Posts

Posted - 01/27/2015 :  00:27:31  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Well, my Athearn fleet let me down again, so I've un-retired my Kato P42s. I haven't replaced AMTK 161's front truck yet. Played around with it a couple nights ago, and found that it runs in spurts. When it dies, it will sometimes take off again if I wiggle the flywheel. Sometimes, it'll take off, and other times it'll just buzz.

These engines are nice, when they're up and running. But, the motorized trucks can fail without warning.
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sschaer
Moderator

911 Posts

Posted - 02/01/2015 :  08:03:07  Show Profile  Visit sschaer's Homepage  Reply with Quote
sad to hear about the issues you have with these kato units. from my experience with kato n-scale i'd say they have the best drives on the market.
not sure if kato has the same reputation within h0-scale.
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swchief3
Passenger

USA
142 Posts

Posted - 02/01/2015 :  23:25:45  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by sschaer

sad to hear about the issues you have with these kato units. from my experience with kato n-scale i'd say they have the best drives on the market.
not sure if kato has the same reputation within h0-scale.



I think they do. Their other HO locomotives are extremely smooth, with silky drives. I just recently picked up both the new HO Amtrak F40s, and they are silky smooth... just like the previous run. I wish they'd just done the P42s with the same HM-5 motor and dog-bone drive combination that they use on everything else. Seems like they went out of their way to "reinvent the wheel". Oh, well... as long as they keep P42 parts in stock, I guess we'll be OK.
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swchief3
Passenger

USA
142 Posts

Posted - 02/05/2015 :  04:52:12  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
More truck failures to report. AMTK 145, my newest unit, is in trouble. BOTH trucks are failing. AMTK 188, my third oldest, which just had its front truck replaced, is now losing its rear truck. I now have FOUR failed trucks, including AMTK 161's failed truck from nearly a month ago. It would take $200, plus tax and shipping, to get all these engines running again. The motors are available by themselves ($25.00 each), but those wire leads are so delicate that they'll break if you even look at them the wrong way. Safer to go with the motorized truck, though you'd end up with multiple truck assemblies sitting on the side, as these motors fail.

I can't think of anything good to say about this.

A little while ago, I saw a used Kato HO P42 on "that auction site". Its gears are stripped. I haven't had that issue with any of mine, so I guess that IS something good to say.

Oh, well... can't say I didn't try with these things.

Edited by - swchief3 on 02/05/2015 04:54:28
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swchief3
Passenger

USA
142 Posts

Posted - 03/22/2015 :  04:42:08  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
I'm trying again with these things. Got them back out, after yet another round of Athearn failures. Happily, the Katos are doing better than the last time I posted. I went back to the wire brush to clean the wheels, rather than the wetted cloth, and the engines are now pretty much back to normal. So, thankfully, I don't have to spend mega-bucks on a bunch of new trucks. I do still have to replace AMTK 161's front truck, as I can't get it to run reliably.

I've been running AMTK 188 and AMTK 68 this afternoon and evening, teamed up and pulling a nine-car consist. Rock-solid running, with no issues... yet...


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swchief3
Passenger

USA
142 Posts

Posted - 03/23/2015 :  00:26:05  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
As I feared, I spoke too soon. AMTK 188's front truck is about to fail. It stalled several times this afternoon, both mounted to the chassis and tested separately. Its rear truck is iffy. AMTK 68's rear truck has lost power, and is showing signs of impending failure. Its lead truck whines horribly in reverse. Neither of the 68's trucks ran all that well, when tested. Cleaned both units' wheels again, but no change. A stall is a stall, and that's something neither clean wheels nor track will fix. AMTK 161's front truck serves as a good example.

These things are not going to last, so it's back to Athearn, good or bad. The Athearn units are very temperamental and variable. Sometimes, they run great. Other times, they run like garbage. But, if they fail, most times you can keep the train moving, to some degree. If a Kato P42 fails, you just stop. You stop completely. The thing will not move. Incidentally, given my concerns about the twin motors not matching, I tried running a Kato P42 with just one of its two coreless motors. No dice. One motor is not strong enough to move the thing. Gotta have both motors. And, if one motor fails, I would bet it can easily kill the other motor because of the sudden drag.


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swchief3
Passenger

USA
142 Posts

Posted - 04/23/2015 :  00:22:36  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
About a week ago, I tried once again with these Kato engines. I ran AMTK 66 and AMTK 68, MU'd with a nine-car train. They ran fine... no issues at all. Ran another train, with AMTK 188 (leading) and AMTK 184 (trailing), and had nothing but trouble. The 184 was slow and lethargic, and the 188 was very noisy and its forward speed fluctuated wildly. After extensive troubleshooting with the 184, I found that a wheel was out of alignment. Popped it out, remounted it, and the engine ran much better. AMTK 188? Not so much. Tested both trucks independently. The 188's front truck ran at approximately the speed of sound. It just TORE around the tracks, maxing out at 12V with the throttle barely open a quarter of the way. It was unreal! The rear truck ran like it was stiff and sore. That wasn't too surprising, since its companion truck up front was so wildly out of control. I adjusted the 188's front truck until I was blue in the face, but could not get it to behave.

Made another run with a Kato pairing a few days ago, after the ill-fated run with 188 and 184. I ran the 66 and 68 again, same arrangement as before, to see if they would run as well this time as they had on the previous run from a few days earlier. Nope. AMTK 68 had a failure. AMTK 68's front truck had been problematic, i.e., whiny and noisy, in reverse, but was fine running forward. Well, I had to do a short reverse move with the train, and AMTK 68's front truck failed. It completely locked up in reverse, the motor would not respond, and the track current spiked to maximum. I thought it was perhaps a Kadee coupler "tail" that was touching the tracks during the move, thus shorting everything, but not the case. Tested the offending engine by itself, with NO coupler interference, and the result was the same... an electrical current spike and a frozen truck.

If I were to keep running these things, I'd be replacing motors every time I turn around. So, what about running a train with just one powered unit? I did that. Way back when. I seem to recall having had a bunch of problems then, as well. I'd have to go back through all my posts and see. But, you get the idea... these things will not last, and their running characteristics are extremely inconsistent. And, Kato has just announced two more road numbers in phase Vb, to ship in May or June. Be interesting to see what happens with those units, and to see if they change anything.

***

Forgot to mention that I removed all the paper shims I'd installed awhile ago. No noticeable performance changes, and no noticeable change in ride height.

Another thing I forgot to mention is that AMTK 66, my third oldest unit, is still running on its original motors, and runs fine. Absolutely nothing wrong with it.

Edited by - swchief3 on 04/23/2015 07:31:47
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swchief3
Passenger

USA
142 Posts

Posted - 04/24/2015 :  00:00:31  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Spot-checked the problem trucks/motors today (April 23rd). AMTK 188's front truck, which was running ridiculously fast a day or two ago, now runs normally... as if nothing had happened. AMTK 68's front truck no longer whines in reverse, which is good, but its motor now stalls intermittently in both directions... same as the lead motor on AMTK 161. Just for kicks, I took a chance and put a tiny bit of lube on 161's motor shaft. (Gasp!) Since the motor was already acting up and would have to be replaced, I figured I had nothing to lose. No change. The lube neither helped nor hurt the motor, so far as I can tell.

I went ahead and ordered individual replacement motors for the 161 and the 68. I'm going to continue to work with these Kato engines, because I'm sick and tired of all the Athearn problems that keep coming up. Same problems, over and over again.

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swchief3
Passenger

USA
142 Posts

Posted - 04/28/2015 :  07:51:00  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
I was all set to say that these things are much better... and they were. I had 2-3 really good days of running with them. Then... trouble struck. AMTK 66 (my third oldest) and AMTK 145 (my newest) each had BOTH trucks fail. AMTK 188 was doing better, but is faltering again.

The replacement motors should be arriving today. Can't say I'm all that excited about it now, though, since four more motors have gone bad.

This is the end of the line. What a ride.
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swchief3
Passenger

USA
142 Posts

Posted - 05/02/2015 :  03:04:03  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Oh, no... here we go, again. This guy just won't shut up about these things! I'm almost afraid to post this, for fear I'll jinx myself. Guess I shouldn't have said that this was the end of the line.

This afternoon, I went ahead and installed the new motors in the front trucks of AMTK 68 and AMTK 161. I also made one other change... I turned the rear trucks around. I did some scrounging around online last night, and read some coreless motor discussions on some RC car and RC airplane/helicopter forums, and the sense I got was that coreless motors sometimes favor running in one direction over the other. This got me thinking about all the weird experiences I've been having... and documenting ad nauseam... with these engines. I HAVE noticed that some of the Kato motors spin one rate one direction, yet another rate... slower or faster... the other way. So, I started experimenting with these engines by reorienting the motors, so they're pointed the same direction. Sure enough, the difference was dramatic. (Dramatic improvement, that is.) I flipped the rear trucks around on all seven engines last night, and did some quick testing, and locomotive performance skyrocketed.

In last night's online reading and scrounging, I ran across a business that sells coreless motors. I know... big deal... there are a lot of places that sell these things. Here's the "big deal" that got my attention. This retailer, whose name I don't remember, offered a coreless motor PAIR for sale. The item description stated that these two motors were tuned to run in opposite directions. (Hmmm... ) This is why I flipped the rear trucks around on all my P42s, so both motors are facing the same direction... flywheel-forward. As I mentioned, the difference was amazing. Current draw is much better, overall running is much smoother, top-end speed is much higher, and there is no longer any sense of the motors "fighting each other".

The Kato replacement coreless motors offered for sale don't specify an operational direction. (Not that I've seen, anyway.) The only directional indicator is the way the truck itself is configured. Perhaps this is why I've had so much trouble with these things, i.e., with one motor pointed one way, and the other motor pointed the opposite direction. It seems to make sense. All the problems I've had with surging, lagging, power loss, premature motor failure... maybe this is it. I don't have the specific scientific knowledge to say definitely that motor orientation discrepancy is why I've had all these problems. I can only speak from direct, hands-on experience. If a merchant is selling a coreless motor pair that is specifically tuned to run in opposite directions, then maybe there's something to having these P42 motors pointed the same direction. The Kato coreless motor does not specify a direction, i.e., they don't sell a "forward-running" motor or a "rearward-running" motor. They just sell a motor. So, if this one motor favors running in a specific direction, it would make sense that they would conflict, when positioned facing opposite ways.

I am running the 68 and the 161 this evening, and the running is the smoothest and most responsive it's ever been. Over the next several days, weeks, whatever... I'll cycle through all seven engines, to see if this theory plays out, and to see if the consistency holds.

I am encouraged.
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