@David Johnston posted:My experience with these bells is that they loose volume because the solenoid armature does not return all the way, so on the next power shot there is very little travel of the hammer and it does not hit very hard. Try lifting the rear of your tender about an inch and see if this helps. That will help the armature slide back inside the solenoid coil.
David, that was my starting point - the bell was indeed sticking, and was highly intermittent in its operation because of it. I disassembled what I could, cleaned the slug and did my best to drench the interior of the coil with alcohol. When everything had dried, i swabbed a bit of extra fine graphite on the slug - it is smooth as butter right now.
In my experience the worst ones are bells which got oiled. Agreed! The best I have been able to do is clean all the moving parts so they are absolutely clean. This includes the armature and the sliding points and rotation points on the frame. Even this only helps some. This bell is just crying for a conical spring around the solenoid armature. It would have to be a really light weight spring on this one - its best ring doesn't carry much punch.
But the bell frame is all staked together, and I have not wanted to tear one apart to try this. I may try a coil spring to pull the solenoid all the way back out, but not yet.
These bells sound really good if you can get them to work properly, but I have yet to succeed at this. I do have one that works well, unfortunately it is buried away in one of 30+ boxes, so comparisons aren't readily available. What bothers me the most about this issue is that I cannot think of any reason the engine should have ANY effect on the bell.
It crossed my mind that the engine might be drawing a lot of current and lowering the voltage to the bell, but the exact opposite is occurring. The bell does ring somewhat at lower voltages (7-8v), but the ringing disappears as you open the throttle - by the time I am at 12v, there's no longer any solenoid motion! This behavior smacks of electrical noise interference, but this is a solenoid and heater strip, not a noise sensitive PCB! I would love to substitute the bell ringing lamp plate just to eliminate the possibility of a defect with the thermal switch, but the only one I found was $55+shpg, and that's not really an option.
It is hard to believe that Lionel made this same bell for so many years, but never got it quite right.
