Need help.. MTH wireless draw bar question.

Yes there is a spring and washer.  Make sure you use the plastic cover on the new bar even if you have to take it off the old bar and make it shorter, especially protect the locomotive end of bar with plastic so the spring will not wear into bar. JRJ and GGG will better help you

Clem 

Oh shoot... Okay thank you Clem.

any ideas where I can get the spring and washer? I do have the little plastic fitted washer or sleeve that fits on the draw bar, but I can't find the spring or washer. 

Thanks again!

Mike

Hey there, 1:07 am my time, as I was just lamenting my pre perfect  running Berkshire, staring at it on one of the drawers of my roll away tool box, I got an idea that maybe the spring got caught up inside the engine, I grabbed the pilot wheels and rear trucks and started shaking it back and fourth.. (So the wheels weren't flopping around) Well, the spring came rolling out! ;D but no washer... 

Is the washer you talked about made of metal or is it the little plastic piece that has a hole on one end and covers the electrodes from making any kind of contact with the frame?  If there was a metal washer then I could take it all apart and see if it's inside. Or if it's just that removable plastic washer like piece, I will be at peace with this whole debacle of trying to change out the draw bar. 

OK looked at mine, no metal washer. Just a black  plastic sleeve on top and a clear plastic sleeve on underside.

Oh awesome, thank you for taking your time to take this pic!

mine doesn't have the clear piece of plastic, I would've seen it. Mine just has a black piece of plastic that looks like your clear one. Shoot, I hope... I'm pretty sure I would've seen that if mine had it. It all happened so fast once I unscrewed the screw, because of the spring pushing everything apart. I didn't realize the spring was there and once the screw was out, everything just popped apart. 

Again thank you! A tip of the cap to you. 

Thank you both for the pictures. Seriously awesome of you guys.. 

I have a Rail King GS4 Daylight that is bran new and the mounting screw fell out. It comes with a plastic washer and they mount on the underside of the engine cab as shown above. I don't know what caused it to fall out, I looked all over the layout and can't find it.

My technician insinuated that I may have loosened it up , now after reading your post I know why.

I'm interested to know your reasoning for wonting to install a shorter draw bar. I have gotten pro and con opinions on the subject from people on this forum and club members. All respected technicians I might add.

I think the 50 mm ones that MTH installs are a little long for my O 42 turns so I can understand you reasoning.

As for the screw and washer we are waiting for one to come from MTH as I type. It seems that there are not a lot of them on hand at MTH.

Hey NJ, I wanted the short one because it looked more scale. The one that comes on the locomotive is pretty long. I did a trial fit and the short one appeared like it would be fine with my Lionel fast-track 036. But I couldn't get the train to run using it. I put it on, hooked it to the tender and manually (and gently) pushed it around the curves and it looked like it would've worked fine. It was definitely a fit to where you couldn't use anything shorter, that's for sure. But never the less it seemed like it would've been ok. Now I'm not sure if I want to mess with putting the short one on again. It was pretty difficult to get my fingers in there to unplug and plug in the draw bar. There isn't much wire slack. When it didn't work with the short bar I honestly thought I messed up one of the wires in the plug. But after plugging the long bar back in, everything worked. So now I'm not sure I should mess with something that works. It looked really cool tho. Much better than the long bar. 

I called MTH about the plastic washer and spring before I saw these pictures and you're right, those parts might not be something they have on hand.. 

Oh by the way, when I hooked up the long bar again I unscrewed the screw on the rear trucks so they would pivot out of the way and it gave me the room I needed to feel like I could safely plug and impug the draw bar. But again I don't know if I want to keep messing with it and push my luck. I kept visioning my custom painted locomotive being  packaged up and sending it to MTH for repair, and not getting there because of being lost or damaged during transit. Ahhhhhhh this hobby can be stressful when something isn't right!

Sad, Mike Wolf's book talks about the advice about quality Lou Caponi gave him. I fear Mike forgot that chapter in his life. Sad! 

Hey Mike, get your head out! Why kill your business with this junk drawbar? Admit you made a big mistake and offer a reasonably priced fix. Your fans will forgive honesty but the hard headed path you are following is just a trip to obscurity.  It would be much smarter to just sell it and let the new owners correct this monster.

I'm sure you can improvise the spring, it looks a lot like the spring from standard knuckle couplers.

gg1man posted:

Sad, Mike Wolf's book talks about the advice about quality Lou Caponi gave him. I fear Mike forgot that chapter in his life. Sad! 

Hey Mike, get your head out! Why kill your business with this junk drawbar? Admit you made a big mistake and offer a reasonably priced fix. Your fans will forgive honesty but the hard headed path you are following is just a trip to obscurity.  It would be much smarter to just sell it and let the new owners correct this monster.

Wow!  How short the memory.  So many did not like the tether and the drawbar was the solution.  Sure, there can be problems with the draw bar too, but not to the degree you state in my opinion.

Granted some do not want to do it but if you take off the shell of the engine, you have the access to make sure the harness going to the drawbar is free with sufficient slack when drawbar rotates.  And access to install new drawbar.

The shorter the draw bar the wide radius curves needed and the more the drawbar swivels on small radius turns.  So it is not just bumping of the engine and tender you put more strain on the drawbar connection to the harness as it swivels.  Hence the minimum radius recommendation.  G

Hi G, there are not many people out in toy train land who are a bigger fan of MTH then me and when I start to publicly complain about something the problem has long become acute.

Not only have I seen this issue on a number of my and friends MTH products, when I wrote multiple e-mails to them via their web site asking about this issue I received zero response. So I ask, what gives?

I am not a trained MTH or Lionel repairman because I don't have the time to spend on the effort it takes to become one. But, with over fifty years hands on experience with electrical -mechanical applications there is little in these toys where I cannot understand the principals involved. For this reason I have to tell you if I ever ran into an issue where the customers field engineers had to open up a piece of equipment to insure it works, after a few such field fixes the manufactures design engineers would be asking for a full report. In fact, over the years I have seen them show up on site on a number of occasions to see for themselves. Then again, it's hard to fly in from China!

Look, we as technicians have all seen hundreds of such applications problems, big and small  crop up over the years. What separates a good manufacture from from a bad one is how they deal with these issues.

All I'm asking from Mike is to acknowledge the issue and offer an intelligent fix. I would even be willing to pay for said fix if it was reasonable.

Oh yea, why are parts not available for such a problematic application?  With all the fun I have had over the years with MTH products this would be a small price to pay to insure to the future health of my supplier.

Also, I would like to say when a customer e-mails your office MTH with reasonable questions answer them you "Lunkheads" !  

I am planning in the next week or so to drill a hole in the tender post and use something like a hitch in to hold the tender connector in place. I am exploring non metallic materials to use as a hitch pin. Given that I also place the engine and tender on its side to make the connection, using the hitch pin should be easy to install. Likely not a good solution for folks that take their engines on and off the layout a lot.

Pete

Norton posted:

I am planning in the next week or so to drill a hole in the tender post and use something like a hitch in to hold the tender connector in place. I am exploring non metallic materials to use as a hitch pin. Given that I also place the engine and tender on its side to make the connection, using the hitch pin should be easy to install. Likely not a good solution for folks that take their engines on and off the layout a lot.

Pete

An easy fix is to slide on some tygon tubing to the exposed part of the draw bar post. There is a good thread on this somewhere. After that the tender connection is secure. I use bib washers. These are black so you can't see them and don't allow the connector to loosen that little tiny bit it needs to in order to come loose.

Hmmmm I don't recal ever seeing that I would have to remove the shell in order to make that draw bar connection. 

Scott, I will try the washer trick first.  Never heard the term Bibb washer before. I always called them faucet washers. Live and learn.

Pete

I looked at removing the shell as an option but on my Berkshire it looks as if you would need to unplug the draw bar in order to remove the shell. 

Norton posted:

Scott, I will try the washer trick first.  Never heard the term Bibb washer before. I always called them faucet washers. Live and learn.

Pete

Found a picture!

I just cut off a small piece of this tubing you can find at hardware stores by the foot

Clem, Scott, have you ever had the connector loosen when using these? Just wondering when running for hours if these will work their way down. 

Pete

Norton.....  I did at first but then I just cut a longer piece of tube and then that worked. 

Norton posted:

Clem, Scott, have you ever had the connector loosen when using these? Just wondering when running for hours if these will work their way down. 

Pete

No. But I run and on small layout and never get over 20 smph. Those bibb washers really go on tight though. Not so tight that they are very hard to get off but still very snug. The fatal flaw in the wireless drawbar IMO is that it can work loose by a tiny amount when the engine is running. But that tiny amount makes things worse and so on until the connection fails. The bibb washer or tygon tubing keeps the connection from coming loose by that tiny amount in the first place so no failure -- ever. At least that's the theory.

Good to know guys. Scott I think a smaller layout with tighter curves is a harder test then the club layout I run on. I will try that before drilling the tender post.

Pete

Heads up guys MTH has these screws on order, they have to come in from China. This info comes to me from my dealer, you don't think MTH would bother to talk to lowly little me, do you?

Wyatts dad posted:

Hmmmm I don't recal ever seeing that I would have to remove the shell in order to make that draw bar connection. 

Not at the tender.  I am talking about the engine side.  If shell comes off and it does, you have more room for your finger to connect the harness connector into the drawbar header at the engine.  Plus ensure freedom of movement.   You never saw any thing that said to remove the drawbar at the engine side either.

Any screw or assembly with a spring behind it should be removed carefully and accounting for spring pressure.  Couplers, pilots, drawbars etc....  That way you control how it comes apart and can see how the parts go back on.  G

Yeah yeah I get it... Lol but I wasn't sure which screws were to remove the shell and I didn't think I'd need to disassemble the whole thing just to change out the draw bar. 

Annnnnnd! Since MTH doesn't include instructions with their new locomotives I didn't have anything to go off of. They really should just tack on the extra 4 or 5 bucks into the price and include a set of instructions! Go online right? Right. Well how do all these old guys that don't use the Internet get this information easil??? Hmmm??? Hahaha 

Can someone tell me where the clear plastic washer goes?

The spring and round washer go above the drawbar on the engine side and the other plastic piece goes below the drawbar protecting the connector pins.

Pete

Thanks Norton, If I understand you correctly it should look like this picture?

Yes.