gunrunnerjohn posted:feet posted:It's sad what we pay for this stuff and parts are obsolete in 5 years or less. I do not understand why this is.
In this case, I think the parts just fell off.
John, I think what he was referring to (?), was the info I found on the motor and the frame, which pretty much makes these earlier production dockside switchers obsolete when the motors fail, at least by what I'm seeing here.
In fairness to Lionel, it could be that the original motor was no longer available from their motor manufacturing vendor. This happened to MTH as I heard Mike Wolf talk about having to retool a gear box for one of their locomotives due to this issue.
But it doesn't change the reality that these locomotives stand a very good chance of being completely unrepairable in the near future. I don't know how many series 1 motors are in the hands of parts dealers. And I don't know if you could cob a fix by drilling the holes for the motor mounting a little bigger to compensate for the wider dimension of the motor mounting holes. It's hard to tell if the part of the motor where the gear comes out, are the same between the two motors. One thing for certain: The motor can't wobble and has to be perfectly centered in the frame or you'll chew up gears.
So the way it appears, is when you need a new motor, you'll need the series 2 motor ($17.50), and then you'll need a new series 2 frame too ($85.00). And I haven't studied this enough: This is all provided there were NO other changes made to that frame that would require other new parts. Oh, and I just noticed the reverse board (part 19 on the Lionel list) is both obsolete and unavailable. I suppose you might be able to put in a small regular reverse board (provided you can find one small enough) but you'll lose the whistle - and anything else the original board did. It'd be cheaper to just buy a newer production version of the docksider, and keep the older one for any usable parts, outside of the motor, frame and circuit board.
I'm glad I looked at all of this. And I'm glad I decided to stick with the MPC docksider version over this certainly nicer looking and proportioned model being discussed. Mine might not be as nice a model, but even with years of running on it, it is still seeing regular use on my layout.
