Brand New Legacy Engine will not run

Check the traction tires. All the F3/F7's (two sets I bought) had the wrong traction tires and they bound up on the wheel brake bracket and they would not run but wanted to. You can cut the ones binding off to make sure it runs. Lionel will send you new traction tires to fix.

Pretty easy to fix yourself or Lionel will fix it for you.

Joe

I have packed it up. I do remember seeing one of the traction tires kind of binding up while it was trying to move. 

I will unpack and see if I can see what is happening.

Before I packed it up i had turned it over and used leads to power it. It still had a really tuff time to get it to spin but did eventually.  Put it on the track and it just derailed itself trying to move. 

Joe

Do you remember if the second set that was included was also wrong?

Thanks

Bob

If it turns out to be the traction tires I would loose the Lionel tires as they are usually thicker and get some new tires from MTH. No sense in putting the same traction tire back on if that's what causing the problem.

Chris,

I thought the same thing (Get them from MTH) but the new tires that Lionel stock work perfect. And they will send them to you for free.

Bob:

I didn't chance it and got new ones from Lionel. They know they have a problem.

Joe

Thanks everyone.

Was just reading manual online to see how to change traction tires and read about error code indicated by flashing cabin light. The cabin light was flashing while I was trying to get it to work. The Non powered A unit was smoking and the powered A was not. While I was trouble shooting I turned off the smoke switch on the powered A. Guess I will have to dig it out and see what else is going on with it.

Bob

 Just took it out of the box... could this be the problem?

 Cant believe I didn't see that.

All of the traction tires were worn from rubbing. I cut them all off and it works perfectly.

Going to try the other set just to see and i think I have a few others from an old engine.

Now to see what the flashing cab indicates.

Thanks again

Bob

Its good to see you got it working. I can definitely see how something like that would cause a problem. F3's are my favorite diesels, and now that you got yours working, maybe it will become yours, too! 

My Legacy F7s chewed up the tires too.  As recommended on this forum, I used MTH DE0000018 traction tires.  They run great now.

Yup. That's a problem.  I had a steamer do that to me and it stopped dead in it's tracks. Don't feel bad;I didn't see it right away either.

All good information.  The MTH traction tire is the way to go.  I have changed many for customers.

Thanks everyone for the info, saved me a lot of headache. I called Lionel and they said they were unaware of problem, who knows. They have sent me out new traction tires at no cost.

Thanks again

Bob