LGB U Class Model No 2070

[KeithT]

Many moons ago. it may have been on GSM there was a post giving details of a stripdown of motion on the U Class. I saved it but it was lost when my HDD went to its maker somewhere in Thailand!
Mine which has the plastic motion, has broken the piston valve rod(?) I was hoping not to have to do a complete stripdown but I am stuck on how to detach the slide bars from the motion bracket. I have removed one black fixing screw which faces rearwards. Do I need to remove the bracket and if so is it merely a case of removing the two screws underneath the loco? ( I am sure it won't be that easy...)
Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Spule 4]

You may not need to remove it at all.

Mine broke flush with the "machined" base of the valve rod. In your case, you would need to snip it back. So I took a pin vice with a suitable drill bit and replaced the missing part with some plastic rod. Good as gold!

 

[KeithT]

You may not need to remove it at all.

Mine broke flush with the "machined" base of the valve rod. In your case, you would need to snip it back. So I took a pin vice with a suitable drill bit and replaced the missing part with some plastic rod. Good as gold!

That is where mine broke but the drop link then dropped(!) hitting the track and the loco went along hoppity-hop bending the drop link in the process.
Fortunately, I have the replacement courtesy of Herr Pyker.

 

[KeithT]

As suspected there was rather more to it than just removing the two screws I described earlier. A further screw holding the slide bar assembly to the motion bracket must be removed but then it is a case of "fiddling" the assembly off its spigot and behind the motion bracket whilst lifting the cylinder. Quite a fiddle which may mean turning the wheels slightly in order to get the assembly past the axle securing bolts. The crosshead is removed by "unsnapping" one of the small lugs from the slide bar and lifting off.
Replacement should have been a simple reversal of the above but, in my case the replacement valve spindle - this was the component which broke - turned out to be significantly shorter and of greater diameter than the original. It took me twice as long to ream out the hole in the cylinder as it did to do the rest of the job. Happily the spindle was long enough.
Getting the slidebars back around the motion bracket was the only awkward part of the assembly, but again rotating the wheels helped to wriggle it in place.
It is not perfect though. I detect a distinct "bind" as I rotate the wheels which I must resolve before I can use the loco again. Hopefully, it is just that the valve spindle is still a tight fit.

Whilst I had the loco on the bench (dining table) I took off the bottom cover plate to find almost totally dry gears. Normally, when I buy a loco s/h I check that the gears are lubricated but I must have missed this one.