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Hi Everyone,

283 steam engine with 4 position reversing unit.  Everything about the reverser looks original to me. 

When I go from forward to neutral, or reverse to neutral; the engine lunges in that direction before it goes into neutral.  

This did this before I opened the tender, and still does it after I cleaned the reverse unit.  I cleaned the drum, fingers, polished the drum, and oiled the ends of the drum.  I added slight pressure to the fingers.  The drum looks good.  It turns well.  The fingers are landing where they should on the drum.  

It makes perfect sense why the engine does this.  When I'm in forward and stop the train, the drum is still in the forward position.  When I reapply power, the fingers are still on the forward pads of the drum - so the engine lunges forward.  At the same time, the reverser solenoid engages, and rotates the drum into the neutral position, and the engine goes into neutral. 

Like I said:  It makes sense why it is doing this.  But I know it's not supposed to do this.  None of my other Flyer engines do it. Somehow, the solenoid is supposed to turn the drum before the engine sees enough power to move the wheels.  

What am I missing so I can fix this?

Thank you,

Rick

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Rick - here's my two cents! 

First - You should not apply oil to the ends of the drum. Any viscous material will only serve to slow the action down, and you will most certainly pay for it down the road when the oil attracts dirt. I would take a Q-tip dipped in alcohol and clean the oil off both ends of the drum and clean both slots where the drum ends run up and down.

The fact that your engine starts at a low voltage and gets moving is a good thing, so I wouldn’t do anything to the engine to delay its start. But I would focus on tweaking the e-unit for better performance.

When I finish cleaning/overhauling my e-units, I test them by hooking the coil up directly to my ZW and just cracking the throttle – generally about 8 volts. The e-unit should operate quickly and consistently with the pawl/drum assembly operating flawlessly time after time as seen in the first half of this video. Feel free to ignore the 2nd half of the vid, it was made just to show progress to one person on a repair.

Since you have already cleaned your e-unit, you should test it and compare its speed to the one in my video. If they are the same, and you're doing the test at 8 volts, then you may have to live with the problem. Others will tell you that some engine & e-unit combinations typically demonstrate the same issue you're seeing. In my opinion, it's a design issue.

George

Quick edit: there is a slight possibility that you may have connection issues, so when you test your e-unit, leave it in the engine frame and connect power to the collector and frame - note the performance. Then retest it hooking directly to the e-unit coil terminal and e-unit frame. If you see any difference in response, i.e. sluggish action when powering from the collectors, you may have some bad connections coming from your collector(s).

Last edited by GeoPeg

For lube where lube shouldn't really be needed, try "T-9". A non messy dry lube spray. It dries to a very thin, see through white, wax-like film.  Teflon based and it doesn't attract dirt, penetrates near any gap or crack when wet, "plastic safe"(carrier leaves what looks like water stains on some though). It was made by Boeing for lubing and ice prevention on airplane flaps, baydoors, etc.. Ice falls right off, if it even manages to form.

  A tad pricey but you don't need much at all.  A can will last decades if reserved for train use. I've used it on everything from rusty hinge pins on stuck van doors not opened for a decade, to pinball flipper coils where the coil plunger's guide sleeve had side load wear holes so began jamming (temp. till a new sleeve came).... and trains. An amazing product imo.

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OGR Publishing, Inc., 1310 Eastside Centre Ct, Suite 6, Mountain Home, AR 72653
800-980-OGRR (6477)
www.ogaugerr.com

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