I have P&D Hobby single tower chain drives in my F3 A and B units. I assume the Atlas F units are gear driven drives. Is is easy to put a P&D shell on an Atlas unit without too much modification?
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If you think you might have to do maintenance, stick with the P&D. I have found that re- assembling an Atlas drive takes serious skill - you have to carefully align bearings, and they do not always "stay put" as you close it up.
The Atlas drives are 2 motors, one on each truck with a stack of idler gears along the sides of the truck. To me, all two motor drives tend to be a little jerky starting and stopping at typical 2 rail speeds. Atlas seem to be the best of the ones I have seen, but still not as smooth as 2 motor drives.
P&D has replacement/repair parts for their drives.
As for the shells, they may mount differently. The P&D units clip over the frames with cast in clips as I remember. I have never seen an atlas F unit underneath, but all the Atlas stuff I have screw mounts to the frame.
The outside of the shells are made with the same tooling. P&D sold the tooling to Atlas.
