I dabbled with trying to realign my motor on the 2-10-4, but looks like I may break something before finding any success with that. I noticed after a bunch of laps around the track, the ticking noise of the dogbone started slightly coming back. Put Vaseline down into the actual sockets of the u joints instead slathering it on top of the whole assembly. We'll see how long it stays quiet.
I messaged the repair man that fixed the rods on this engine about this issue. He said that he believes this is a common problem because Lionel doesn't have adequate protection in their packaging when shipping and the motor gets knocked out alignment... don't know how much of that is just speculation or truth. My guess is that it is just a shoddy build and improper quality control when these things are first being put together. Maybe one day I'll fix the alignment issue.
