I recently made it to a train show near Atlanta after a nearly 3 year hiatus, and lucked into a box of “stuff” for just $25. It was well worth it. Among the items were two F3 power trucks (front and rear) and two horizontal motors with spur gears on the ends. All of these parts were loose in the box, so I’m not even sure they are from the same type of F3, in fact I don’t think they are. After a good cleaning of the first truck and motor, I reassembled and found a sizeable gap between the motor’s idler gear and the truck’s worm shaft gear. It appears the two gears were maybe 50% - 60% engaged. I can see there would be a lot of factors at play here, and would like to hear from someone with a lot of F3 motor truck repair experience. Is this normal? And if not, what to look for?
Additional facts that may or may not be relevant
- Rear truck has no magnetraction and Front truck has good magnetraction – the rear truck may from a 2333 because it has the skinnier non-magnetic axles
- Both front & rear trucks have nylon idler gears and metal drive gears (at the end of the armature.)
- All gears appear to be in quite good condition, including the nylon idler gears – they show good shape on all teeth
- There is a fair amount of play on both idler gears
- A small amount of wear on both worm gears – they will be replaced
- Both trucks show the exact same issue, no matter how I mix and match motors & trucks, the gap is always there
- I will be ordering and replacing
- the idler gear assy complete with gears
- both worm gears
- At least one drive gear (inside of gear stripped, armature shaft still has good splines)
George
