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Offline Poor Skeleton  
#1 Posted : 06 February 2022 20:49:10(UTC)
Poor Skeleton

United Kingdom   
Joined: 09/10/2015(UTC)
Posts: 550
Location: England, Cambridge
Hi,

My BR218/88807 arrived last week - as you may remember it was a discount purchase, so I'm neither as financially nor emotionally invested as with most purchases!

It's certainly a pretty locomotive, weighing in at 26g, as with other recent BR218s such as 88780, and with similar haulage.

What has disappointed me is the poor slow speed running - very jerky and poorer than my 5-pole 218s and nowhere near as smooth as 88780. Needless to say I've had the thing apart and what I have found is a different worm gear to other models - narrower and without the tapered profile of earlier gears. I wonder if this is what's causing the mechanism to run less freely?


I've been giving it a good running in over the weekend. Not sure it's having any effect, but always fun to run some trains!

At the price, I'm certainly not regretting my purchase, but I am frustrated that the running is not as smooth as I was expecting.

Cheers everyone!


Chris

thanks 2 users liked this useful post by Poor Skeleton
Offline zoooctan  
#2 Posted : 07 February 2022 10:39:32(UTC)
zoooctan

Singapore   
Joined: 07/09/2019(UTC)
Posts: 65
Location: Singapore, Singapore
Hi there Chris, this is strange. I also saw someone on FB mentioning that it had poor slow running characteristics but my experience is that it runs wonderfully and runs slowly as well. I'm using it on Rokuhan track and a Gaugemaster controller.

Gavin
Offline Poor Skeleton  
#3 Posted : 07 February 2022 22:09:59(UTC)
Poor Skeleton

United Kingdom   
Joined: 09/10/2015(UTC)
Posts: 550
Location: England, Cambridge
Originally Posted by: zoooctan Go to Quoted Post
Hi there Chris, this is strange. I also saw someone on FB mentioning that it had poor slow running characteristics but my experience is that it runs wonderfully and runs slowly as well. I'm using it on Rokuhan track and a Gaugemaster controller.

Gavin


It's not unusual for two examples of the same model to have completely different running characteristics, so I have probably just been unlucky. For the record my controller is a clone of the Gaugemaster design (which does give extremely good slow running) so we are pretty much comparing like-for-like.

I swapped the worm gears from a different model earlier with no improvement so I suppose the next step is to swap the complete bogies to see what effect that has!

Cheers


Chris
Offline wildstix  
#4 Posted : 08 February 2022 08:11:52(UTC)
wildstix

Indonesia   
Joined: 12/05/2021(UTC)
Posts: 146
Location: Jakarta Raya, Jakarta
Originally Posted by: Poor Skeleton Go to Quoted Post
Hi,

My BR218/88807 arrived last week - as you may remember it was a discount purchase, so I'm neither as financially nor emotionally invested as with most purchases!

It's certainly a pretty locomotive, weighing in at 26g, as with other recent BR218s such as 88780, and with similar haulage.

What has disappointed me is the poor slow speed running - very jerky and poorer than my 5-pole 218s and nowhere near as smooth as 88780. Needless to say I've had the thing apart and what I have found is a different worm gear to other models - narrower and without the tapered profile of earlier gears. I wonder if this is what's causing the mechanism to run less freely?


I've been giving it a good running in over the weekend. Not sure it's having any effect, but always fun to run some trains!

At the price, I'm certainly not regretting my purchase, but I am frustrated that the running is not as smooth as I was expecting.

Cheers everyone!


Chris



Hey Chris, I think I can chime in about this,

I have the same model, I got it in November 2021. From November to early January this year, its slow speed running is decent. By late January, however, I tested the motor to run (without cars) for almost 15 minutes. After the test, it made strange knocking noise when running forward, and its slow running speed decreased.

I'm using 67013 connected to 3 feeder tracks. Before the test, it would move as soon as I dial the knob, after the test it would only move when I dial 50 on the controller. Still slow speed, but not like before. I tried to clean up and oil the gears (I didn't have the courage to take off the circuit board because there are cables there), but I can only remedy the knocking noise. So now, my 88807 is still working properly, but its slow speed running is not as good as before and still get that knocking noise sometimes.

Anyways, so far what I found is that my 88807 is able to pull 4 TEE cars and a Württemberg on any speed.
Oka aka W. Kapriandi
Märklin Z scale (mini-club) purist but not a modeler!
Offline Carim  
#5 Posted : 08 February 2022 08:52:51(UTC)
Carim

United Kingdom   
Joined: 15/09/2014(UTC)
Posts: 649
Location: London
This sounds like a bit of a nightmare. It is a really good looking loco and I was tempted when Gaugemaster dropped the price. However, it is a bit too contemporary for my layout and I felt it was not quite what I needed; looks like I may have dodged a bullet.

Carim
Offline Poor Skeleton  
#6 Posted : 09 February 2022 21:58:53(UTC)
Poor Skeleton

United Kingdom   
Joined: 09/10/2015(UTC)
Posts: 550
Location: England, Cambridge
Originally Posted by: wildstix Go to Quoted Post

Hey Chris, I think I can chime in about this,

I have the same model, I got it in November 2021. From November to early January this year, its slow speed running is decent. By late January, however, I tested the motor to run (without cars) for almost 15 minutes. After the test, it made strange knocking noise when running forward, and its slow running speed decreased.

I'm using 67013 connected to 3 feeder tracks. Before the test, it would move as soon as I dial the knob, after the test it would only move when I dial 50 on the controller. Still slow speed, but not like before. I tried to clean up and oil the gears (I didn't have the courage to take off the circuit board because there are cables there), but I can only remedy the knocking noise. So now, my 88807 is still working properly, but its slow speed running is not as good as before and still get that knocking noise sometimes.

Anyways, so far what I found is that my 88807 is able to pull 4 TEE cars and a Württemberg on any speed.


That's interesting and very disappointing for you. I wonder what has changed to make the knocking sound and to affect the running?

By way of experimentation, I exchanged the bogies/trucks with a different (smooth running) BR218 and that made no difference, so at least I know the trouble isn't there. I also checked there was nothing fouling the flywheel and drive-shafts - there's really not much else in the top half of the loco. All I'm left with is that the motor might not be running smoothly under load - I can't think of what else might be the cause.

Once it gets going it's quite a nice smooth runner, so I'm not unduly worried, just puzzled why it doesn't run as smoothly as my other 218s.

Cheers


Chris

Offline Zme  
#7 Posted : 10 February 2022 00:04:00(UTC)
Zme

United States   
Joined: 02/10/2013(UTC)
Posts: 760
Location: West Texas
Hello. Hope all is well

It would seem the only things left to check is the motor mounting. The holder should be square on the frame. Sometimes I think the gear is not pressed into where it needs to be on the motor shaft. This would cause it to not ride correctly on the truck gear. Just a thought.

Take good care, enjoy your new addition.

Dwight
thanks 1 user liked this useful post by Zme
Offline wildstix  
#8 Posted : 10 February 2022 08:18:20(UTC)
wildstix

Indonesia   
Joined: 12/05/2021(UTC)
Posts: 146
Location: Jakarta Raya, Jakarta
Originally Posted by: Poor Skeleton Go to Quoted Post


That's interesting and very disappointing for you. I wonder what has changed to make the knocking sound and to affect the running?

Nah, not that much...I kinda expected something would come up, based from what i read in this forum. So I wasn't that disappointed. Like I wrote earlier, I can only remedy the knocking noise. I oiled the gears last time and the noise reduced, so today I tried to dip the main gear in the trucks into oil, and the next thing was, the noise completely gone! From this I suspect that the factory oil was used up when I did the test, that is what made the knocking noise.

Originally Posted by: Poor Skeleton Go to Quoted Post
By way of experimentation, I exchanged the bogies/trucks with a different (smooth running) BR218 and that made no difference, so at least I know the trouble isn't there. I also checked there was nothing fouling the flywheel and drive-shafts - there's really not much else in the top half of the loco. All I'm left with is that the motor might not be running smoothly under load - I can't think of what else might be the cause.

This is the disease of all the new motor, I think. I have the new 88484 and my, how it's so lame compared to the old ones. 88807 is still pretty modest compared to the old motors, so I'm not really complaining about its performance even though the slow running is disappointing.

Originally Posted by: Poor Skeleton Go to Quoted Post
Once it gets going it's quite a nice smooth runner, so I'm not unduly worried, just puzzled why it doesn't run as smoothly as my other 218s.

my 88807 is the only 218 I have, so can't say anything about the swapping experiment. But I can concur that it is smooth once it gets going. Oh and, I think after I dipped the trucks main gear, its slow running is kinda gradually coming back. But I'll have to try it for several more days before I can conclude it definitively. 😊


Oka aka W. Kapriandi
Märklin Z scale (mini-club) purist but not a modeler!
Offline wildstix  
#9 Posted : 10 February 2022 08:20:00(UTC)
wildstix

Indonesia   
Joined: 12/05/2021(UTC)
Posts: 146
Location: Jakarta Raya, Jakarta
Originally Posted by: Zme Go to Quoted Post
Hello. Hope all is well

It would seem the only things left to check is the motor mounting. The holder should be square on the frame. Sometimes I think the gear is not pressed into where it needs to be on the motor shaft. This would cause it to not ride correctly on the truck gear. Just a thought.

Take good care, enjoy your new addition.

Dwight


Did your suggestion, Dwight, and that led to me solving the problem with the knocking noise. Re oil the gears!!! 😅
Oka aka W. Kapriandi
Märklin Z scale (mini-club) purist but not a modeler!
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