Kato 10-1247 noisy run at speed

[Khaul]

I've just got a beautiful 3-car Tsurumi Line 101 series. It was quite noisy out of the box, especially when compared to my also brand new Kato DE10. I have run both models for about 10min in each direction in order to break in the motors. They are both now starting at lower voltages, and run smoothly at low speed. The 101 is still noticeably noisier than the DE10 at mid-high speeds. The problem reminds me of this thread.

 

Is there any simple, easy to solve, cause for the problem? Will it disappear with more running?

[cteno4]

Khaul,

 

With what you can see of the gears on the bottom of the truck do they look dry or lubricated? If dry then a little thick gear oil may do the trick. Sometimes it's the bearings on the motor, but I would start with the trucks if they look dry and then look to the bearings a bearings will require more disassembly. Add small amounts of gear oil at a time with a toothpick and run a bit.

 

Some models do have more of a growl due to their drive chain design (or design flaws), but 98% of the time I've found cleaning and lubrication fix the growlers. Since this is new it should be clean, but never know... Cleaning though requires pulling the trucks off and either cleaning whole or disassembling and cleaning the parts.

 

Sometimes growling can come from the universal joints at either end of the driveshaft not being seated at the correct distance so the drive shaft is either too loose or too tight. But I would look at this if a little lubing does not help.

 

Good luck.

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[Khaul]

Hi Jeff,

 

What do you recommend to use in the truck gears? ACT 1111 NG Jel? I think I would need to order than online. I could get FALLER Special Lubricant + Teflon at the hobby shop. And maybe some grease at the RC car shop, but I am not sure to trust those guys...

 

Pablo

[kvp]

This would be interesting for me too. Is Tamiya servo gear grease usable without cleaning up the factory grease first?

[cteno4]

Pablo,

 

Well that's the $64000 question! There are so many opinions! I've done very well with good old labelles for a long time. They are not the fanciest, but just work. I've used 108 on motor bearings and 102 on the gears.

 

With the Teflons I've always heard you need to very carefully clean everything before applying. I've looked at a couple of workshop videos on it and decided it seemed like too much trouble.

 

I have been eyeing the nanotube that used buckyballs to do the real lubing! They ain't cheap, but thinking of trying them here.

 

Sure others will have some opinions here as well!

 

Jeff

[Khaul]

I've got a silicon based grease intended for plastic differentials in rc cars. Do you guys anticipate any problem with it?

[inobu]

Jump to 3:00 and turn up the volume.

 

 

I think it is a design flaw.  Either it is in the motor casing or the gears pitch circle. It sounds like the gear teeth are slapping each other. Gear pitch point

I wonder if it would be different with the Hyper DX (PWM)

 

 

Inobu

Edited September 14, 2016 by inobu

[kvp]

For me the getaten set sounds louder.

[inobu]

At 3:23 you have hear the 101 it's at higher pitch but not as bad and yeah that getaten is so noise it is funny. They should call it a pontoon boat.

I could not run them. I would take it apart and if I could not fix it I would leave it apart. That does not make any sense to have something run like that. lol 

 

Inobu

Edited September 14, 2016 by inobu

[cteno4]

yes some grind gears on the corners more being twisted against the worm gear some. gear tooth shape and meshing do make big differences in the noise produced (and friction!)

 

Martijn will need to add a running noise level field to his train data base!

 

ive not used the silicon lubes much on trains. again stuck with what i know worked pretty well. a lot of the silicone lubes for hobbies have been for rc work and different that tiny n scale gear sets and tight housings.

 

i have stayed away from grease as in the past with older american stuff ive found folks or manufacturers that used grease that really got hard and gummed up with schmutz and really packed in there. also its pretty tight in most truck gear boxes so better to keep things that will not get packed in IMHO. i have preferred to lightly lube with a heavier oil and then do it more often than try to get a grease that will last long times in there but i think just pack up more dirt. downside is heavy oil will come off easier and get tracks dirtier faster. all a tradeoff!

 

I am going to pick up some nano lube up this week, finally just want to try it!

 

There are lots of opinions and preferences out there on lubing, almost a religion in the hobby...

 

Some design flaws can get quieted some. even the dreaded wire worm drive/shaft of a few of the tomix locos is the rare time ive used grease as it helped its throaty growl some (and the wear it seemed to put on the worm drive area plastic boxes).

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Khaul]

Hmmm, the Tsurumi line getaten is in my next buy list. I am having second thoughts now. The silicon grease does not seem to have had much of a noticeable effect. I applied a little amount of it with a toothpick, in the truck gears. I hope it will get mixed with dust and gunk up. So far the train still does very well at extremely low speeds. 

[Kiha66]

My 581 series had a similar problem which I eventually traced to the motor mount not holding the motor securely.  I added a shim under the tab on the bottom of the motor mount and now it runs much quieter, although still somewhat nosier than I would like.  Not sure how the motor is secured on the 101 series, but here's a picture of where I added the shim on the 581.

[cteno4]

Yeah this sort of thing can be a lot of culprits to track down! Loose motors, out of line joints, slipping drive shafts, broken or worn gears. Takes taking them apart and fiddling. Helps to have some small alligator clips to hook the chassis up to run some in various levels of teardown to try to figure it out.

 

Jeff

[Khaul]

I did some disassembling today. Got the shell off, easy. The couplers and motor cover were also straightforward. I managed also to get the trucks out, but I did not figure out how to access the gears. I imagine I'd need to pull the sides of the truck apart, am I right. With all the fiddling I bent one of the golden contact stripes. I put it all back together and... it didn't go. Disassemble and assembled again and it then worked, phew! Same growling noises, though. The flywheels seem to have a bit of slack and that may be causing the noise. Now I'm slightly concerned about the bent contact stripe.

Edited September 15, 2016 by Khaul

[katoftw]

The copper strips should easily bend back into shape.

[Khaul]

You are right. I'm just being paranoid. I can understand now that the motor mount is slightly loose. I'll try KiHa66's shim trick and report back to the forum.

[Khaul]

My 581 series had a similar problem which I eventually traced to the motor mount not holding the motor securely.  I added a shim under the tab on the bottom of the motor mount and now it runs much quieter, although still somewhat nosier than I would like.  Not sure how the motor is secured on the 101 series, but here's a picture of where I added the shim on the 581.

581 Shim.jpg

I have just added the shim under the tab and the train runs now much quieter. The motor is held in the same way you show in the picture.

[cteno4]

Hey great to hear this worked! Great feeling when you fix it like this, it's worth getting in there and fiddling like that. Good job!

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[Khaul]

Yep, I am very proud and grateful to KiHa66. Now, I recently got the getaden that appears in the video posted by inobu. I have seen other videos in which this trains runs quietly and smoothly. Sure enough, mine growls. Unlike what happened with the 101, the getaden's growl is most noticeable at low speed and then gets a lot better when going faster. It may be something to do with a different resonance frequency.

[Kiha66]

Glad to help!  Those noises can be tricky to track down!

[Khaul]

I have checked the motor of the Kumoha 11. It turned out it was quite loose, so I put a shim on the side. The low speed growl has now disappeared. 

 

Some thoughts: it looks to me that the 101 is of a better, more modern design than the Kumoha 11. The cream coloured motor mount in the 101 is an improvement. It looks like EMU and DMU motors are more of a challenge to keep quite when compared to locomotives that have a lot more space for a proper mount. I am surprised there are not more reports of noisy EMUs and DMUs.

[kvp]

 

 

I am surprised there are not more reports of noisy EMUs and DMUs.

The amount of noise that is percived as a problem depends on each person. For a DMU, a noisy motor might be acceptable. On the other hand, many motors are not mounted on separate mounts, but fixed into the plastic or metal frame of the motor car. Also, there are various old and new designs in production. A good example is the 72 series from Tomix, which even in the newest releases happens to have the old european style power collectors and propulsion structure, that is outdated since wheel tip collectors were introduced around the same time as the first high grade sets a few decades ago. On the other hand, the Kato kokuden series uses the old molds for the shells and non power collecting trailers like most Tomytec cars, but has a modern cardan shaft drive with a low profile motor. This means you can get high detail, good looking sets with an ancient propulsion system and ancient looking sets with relatively modern internals.

 

The kumoha 12 series on the other hand has a design issue and most noise usually comes from the square section part of the cardan shafts hitting the bogies while going through curves around 150-140mm, it's ok at or above 170mm. Considering it was meant to run on Kato's R150 curves, this might be a problem. I don't know if later models (like the kumoha 11) were changed to a fully round shaft though as that might be a good upgrade.

[VJM]

Received the Kato Tsurumi line Kumoha 12 earlier this week and it sounds like a noisy electric shaver.  Like above, the motor is very loose, and I've stuffed a bit of paper on both sides of the motor between it and the metal weight to act as a shim.  Managed to reduce the noise somewhat.

[kvp]

Btw. i've found the 11 series sets discounted and got them last month. Both motor units are noisy in curves. The problem is still the cardan drive. (at least i have 8 cars now from the 11/12 series, still missing two trailers)

[GiantRoboJustin]

I know it's been a while since the last post on this thread, but I've got a rather noisy Hankyu 9300 that I think I'll try that motor mount shim trick on. It was quiet out of the box...for about 30 seconds, then the growling started and got louder since. I'm pretty sure it's motor vibration too, cause it runs much quieter with the body shell and motor cover removed. I also tried Kato Uni-Clean oil on the gears like it says in the instructions, but that didn't seem do any good. Aside from the sound it sure runs good though. It's even annoyingly better at slow speed crawling than any of my DE10's, if only I could use it for switching, lol

 

Here's a video of it I posted on Youtube: