Bachman Climax Probs

[Tony]

Dirty wheels All my geared Bachmann locos are suseptable and even when they look clean a quick rub of fine paper or a sqirt of my muscal and they run alot better

Tony

 

[funandtrains]

Is it an old one or one of the new designs? The older type have a design fault with the rear drive shaft which is easy to fix.

 

[PaulRhB]

Also check if there's a contact problem on the bogie where it meets the chassis if wheel cleaning doesn't help. There's a mechanical electrical contact issue there somewhere if pressure sorts it out.

 

[Tim Brien]

Your Climax seems to have succumbed to the dreaded power contact issue. Bachmann use a very poor power pickup design at their drive truck/body interface. It occurs on all their power brick models. The cure is to hard wire the trucks to the chassis. The fact that the loco stops 'dead', rather than just one truck, indicates that both trucks have an issue.

 

[beavercreek]

Hi Roly
I had the same problem with one of my Climaxes. The connect coupling from the central gear housing to the rear block was actually sticking due to different torque forces on the two couplings and causing the whiole loco to 'bunny hop' along and even come to a halt.
It is a problem that Bachamnn knew about and they produced a modified coupling that had a 'slip' clutch effect so that the coupling would not stick as the transmission prop would 'slip' and carry on turning. My loco was perfect after I swapped it. The later editions (not the brand new one) had the 'slip' coupling fitted already.
Bachmann US are the ones to contact and they supply the part as a free upgrade.......or at least they used to.

 

[beavercreek]

That is exactly the same symptoms that mine had. It looked like both motors had stopped but the rear coupling was actually jamming the whole lot. The new coupling completely cured it. It was lucky in my case that the whole 'cosmetic' drive mechanism didn't break apart.

 

[funandtrains]

If you take of the rear gear box cover the drive shaft can be just lifted out with gear attached. I cut off the teeth from the gear allowing the hub to spin freely which solved the problem and looks untouched externally. Other people have filed the square drive shaft round in the squre slide coupling but you can see this is you want to display the model.

 

[beavercreek]

Hi Roly
After your last message it does look like the culprit is not the drive train, although it does give similar symptoms, but the contacts in the front truck. Do a google, I did a couple of years back, to check how to disassemble the truck and then clean or replace the contact. There is one guy who posted the complete operation with piccies. I will have a look on my hard-drives to see if I saved it before I printed it out.

 

[JRinTawa]

I have a scanned copy of the "technical" pages and exploded diagrams from my the manual that came with my Climax so if you want a copy drop me a PM with your email and I send you a copy.
I'd suggest bench testing it on a rolling road if you have one. You said you hard wired it when you installed the decoder, I presume you mean hard wired right down into the power bogies. Perhaps a loose wire? Oh the joys of fault finding :wits:

 

[beavercreek]

Excellent Ross that was the article that I was hunting for on me hard drives....If this info doesn't help to cure it Roly, then I'll be a son of a gun................

 

[beavercreek]

Excellent Ross that was the article that I was hunting for on me hard drives....If this info doesn't help to cure it Roly, then I'll be a son of a gun................

George Shreyer's pages should be bookmarked by everybody..a great source of info.

Totally agree, but I had lost all of my bookmarks for some reason when I upgraded to Firefox 10 a few weeks back. So was looking for my downloads as I have saved all of George's pages to hard disk. Will redo the bookmark now as an imperative!

 

[beavercreek]

Good news Roly.....you can now Climax without stuttering!

 

[KeithT]

YES YES YES!! She's Good!!!!
Took the "brush holders" out of the front truck this morning and found 2 out of the 4 had damaged springs. Made a couple out of LGB track contact springs and bingo! Now running like a dream again.
A right faff on though with springs springing and ball bearings dropping into the gear box !!!!!
Such phrases as "Bless my soul", "Fancy that now" and "What a silly butterfingers!! where flying about.
So, thanks again to everyone for the help and advice. GSC scores again!

Isn't it amazing how 'maintenance' enhances the vocabulary?