I'll try to answer them all in one message:
@Chuck Sartor - I'm afraid my videos aren't quite doing the job. Yes, I agree, it does look like something was amiss with the bearings in the first video, but the thing is, there are no bearings (see the 1st pic below.) This is one of those motors where the axles just go straight through a hole in the side frame - no journals, sleeves, etc. Lionel did stamp the frame around the hole outward slightly to act as a spacer for the drive wheel, but that was it. And everything in the drive chain has either fresh oil or grease on it. If you want to see one where the inner race is supposed to spin, check the 2nd pic below. Those are ball bearings I installed on a 600 series motor that had two very worn bearings when I found it! Worked great!! As for the 213, yeah, I know, they are a bit rare. I found that shell (only) at a yard sale, complete with the big round weight riveted through the porthole window in the back door. Unfortunately it was missing the usual nose skirt in front, and apparently a previous owner must have cracked the screw hole in back - when I got it, it had just the top half of the door - someone had cut the rest of the door away and squared it of in the corners. So I completed the job, added plastic, glue and paint.
@gunrunnerjohn, @harmonyards et al. I agree, the bearings are definitely sloppy, they usually are on that style of stamped frame motor. But the two videos below tell a slightly different story, although you have to listen closely. In the first video, running TMCC, as I slowed the motor down with finger pressure on a drive wheel, listen for the clicking noise even as the motor is running quite slow. Admittedly, it's almost impossible to tell the difference in sound between clicking gears and what I am guessing would be clicking caused by electrical spikes - you can see the vertical movement of the armature shaft each time there's a click, indicating either a sudden binding (gears) or a sudden spike in voltage. Now listen to the second video where I am doing the exact same thing - as I slow the motor down with my finger, the major clicks are gone, and so are the vertical bobbles in the armature shaft.
So I'm at a loss as to the root cause, and I don't believe for a second that any clicking that is hard to hear will interfere with my running fun! I wish I had a storage scope where I could see if there were any spikes causing the noise, but I don't, so....
@gunrunnerjohn, Yes, I have seen and heard the virtues of ERR touted many times, and I fully intend to buy/try/use my first one soon. I bought the new LCRU units from Lionel a little over 2 years ago on the 1/2 price sale. $25 each for the LCRUs beat the heck out of $100+ each for the ERRs, especially when used on relatively inexpensive equipment like Lionel ALCO 200's. So it was a $ thing. I look forward to trying something that may be of much better quality!
George
