Bandai B-Train Shorty - Bended axle?

[Dinosbacsi]

Yeah, even though it's a bit annoying, having to open up and fix stuff that are this expensive. But well it's fun at least. By the way, I forgot to mention it in my previous post, but the reason it didn't run at all yesterday night was because last time I took the motor off the chassis, I didn't tighted one of the screws properly as I put it back. So the whole motor sat higher, therefore the pickup plates didn't touch, I suppose.

 

As for the truck pickup plates, they were mostly straight, but I remember seeing at least one of them being a bit bent in some way, it had a slight curve. I suppose it could also cause some unwanted rubbing on the backside of the wheels, so I'll check it some day.

 

Sadly I'm not in the US, I live in Hungary (so basically central-eastern Europe). There is a local hobbyshop that has some german oil and lubricant for model trains, should I give those a try, or use some Kato stuff that keep being recommended here?

[roadstar_na6]

It's somewhat controversial but for greasing you could also use vaseline and for lubing I've read that gun oil (Ballistol) would also work. For sure the Labelle stuff (which is the same as the Kato stuff) may be better but it's a much higher investment compared to stuff that one might have flying around 🙂

I personally have greased up a loco with vaseline and it runs smooth and silent without any issues.

[cteno4]

Personally I wouldn't use Vaseline for lubrication, it’s not meant for long term use or hard surface use. It’s also a bit thick for our tiny gears. Gun oil is great as it’s meant for this type stuff and is a medium to light weight (there are various weights there). Light lithium greases are ok on big worm gears, but many can cake up with time and a lot of it is formulated for much larger gears with higher torque in like rc cars.
 

Labelles is like $6-7 for a bottle here in the us and that will last you like 10 lifetimes. On tiny motor bearings you want something akin to a fine watch oil as thicker stuff will gum them up. 
 

this is a place I think it’s worth a few bucks to get some good robust oil as it doesn’t go bad and the better the oil the better long term health of your trains! This is why I finally broke down to try the nano-oil as it may give much better performance and is a dryer lubricant so less gunk buildup hopefully. I had to slap myself that I was wincing at a $18 investment in something that could be a useful thing on thousands of dollars of trains and maybe work better and will last years...

 

jeff

[Dinosbacsi]

Well I ended up ordering a bottle of Faller Special Lubricant, whatever that is. I was ordering some tracks from the local model train shop I mentioned previously, so I added it to the cart as a plus. According to the description it's good for moving plastic parts, so I suppose it would be good for the truck gearings?

 

They also sell a "Special Oiler" from the same brand that's for metal and brass parts, apparently. The worm gear from the motor is brass, right? If so, what would one use there? The oil made for metal parts, or the lubricant made for plastic parts, considering it's the metal worm gear touching the plastic wheel cogs there? Is it safe to assume the plastic-safe lubricant is also good for the metal stuff?

 

Also, would one lubricate the wheel axles as well, where they touch the pickup plates?

[cteno4]

sounds like a good general gear lubricant.

 

well if you lube the bogie gears the wheel axles will get oiled as all in the same little space and a good oil tends to penetrate all the nooks and crannies as well. One reason not to over lube is that it can find its way to the collector points and get them dirty. The combo of arcing soot, dust, oil ends up being that stuff you scrape off collectors sometimes. If you want to be ultra tune up then getting a good contact cleaner like the wd40 contact cleaner (not wd40) to rub well onto your contact surfaces is good. It cleans it well and what is left in the pores and surface is a good excluder of oils and such, protects from surface oxidation, and is more resistant to arcing causing carbon dust. But I only ever get like this if I’m having some obvious contact issues and see lots of gunk or oxidation going on.
 

You can get into all sorts of high performance specialty oils. Some work better on some metals, but in this case I think it’s not all that needed for n scale stuff. One trick for a while was using a Teflon coating on plastic gears, but that seems to be out of vogue now. It was a pain as everything had to be cleaned and then done carefully and it was a complex chain of what you did with what.. I’ve usually found just a decent medium weight oil for n scale is fine for all the gearing. I’ve moved away from grease on the worm drives as they tend to dry up and eventually collect all the tiny bits of schmutz and become a nasty block eventually. Even with just very light dressing I’ve found a little od crap stuck in the chamber as it seems to hold the stuff more than a medium oil does. With a lot of running of course a medium oil will tend to fly off faster with time, but it’s usually years with my running that relubing is needed and usually just a touch on the truck gears ends up moistening the worm gear well enough. I’m hoping this buckyball lubricant will last longer and penetrate easier and be a dryer lube. We shall see! They have a 10 and 85 weight so you can also mix them to get whatever weight you want, so hoping to experiment.

 

again for the motor bearings you want some very fine oil as even a lightweight oil can get gummy in tiny n scale motor bearings. I have a tiny tune of fine watch oil I got years ago for like $3 and it’s lubed a couple of hundred motors probably! 
 

jeff

[cteno4]

So I tired some nano-oil on the mech and it did improve its performance, smoother running and fewer little stutters when going slower, but I did not have any weights on it so probably will run much nicer with weight. Also went to that nice quiet, fine zizzzzz noise. So a little lubing does help these.

 

I’ll pull out a few trains that were flagged for maintaince for shows and try to do a video pre and post use of the new nano-oil and if I can find a comparable model maybe a head to head with labelles and write up a proper review. Micro Buckyball bearings, that’s the ticket!

 

jeff

[Dinosbacsi]

That's nice to hear. Hopefully the Faller lubricant I ordered will also have some positive effects. I noticed after a while of running there is a repeating squel going on as the wheels rotate. I don't know if it's coming from the wheels or from inside the motor though, all I noticed that it's more audible when going one way, while it's quieter or totally gone when going the other way.

 

Also one thing I noticed is that the bogey on the motor units have quite a bit more resistance to rotating than the bogeys on the free-rolling chassises, even though I suppose that's understandable, after all they have connection with the worm gears and the pickup plates touching also generate some resistance. But I hope some lubrication will help with that as well, as often it looks like the bogeys on the motor unit not rotate freely enough. The car still takes the curve, as obviously there is enough clearance in the flanges, but you can see the bogey is not following the curve propely and stays straigher than the bogeys on the trailer cars, for example. And it also seems to cause derailments on points a few times, at least I think that's the reason.

[cteno4]

Yep with the gears and the larger pivot column there a lot of places for friction and limiting of turn than on regular bogies. 
 

I would expect when in motion the gear train will want to keep the motorized bogies more straight so they won’t track like the free bogies will easily. It’s going to be the flanges doing the tracking on the motor bogies so it’s going to be the minimum tracking allowed by flange limits I would expect. This was probably even worse in your bogies where the axles had come part way apart and thus would be wider gauged and even more limiting in tight curves causing more binding. It’s hard with these tiny mechs as they don’t have a lot of weight so small resistance/friction will be exaggerated in the mech’s performance.

 

good lubing should lessen the resistance and hopefully improve it going thru the tighter curves. I noticed this in the few minutes of playing with it last night on my super mini curve torture test loop.
 

Having some lead strip or the tungsten putty (I think over all just a tad denser than lead) stuffed into mech cars can only help! It’s been on my list of things to play with on btrains.

 

jeff

[Dinosbacsi]

So the Faller Special Lubricant I ordered (alongside with a few rail pieces) arrived today, and man did it make a difference! I simply put a little on the cogs inside the bogeys and onto the two worm gears over the bogeys.

 

For starters, the constant repeating squaling noise that was audible as the train moved seems to be gone completely. And the whole thing sounds quieter, you can hear much less friction and resistance sounds coming from the motor car, and it's really noticeable in performance as well.

 

Due to the reduced friction I suppose, it starts moving under less power, it goes smoother anyways, but what's really noticeable is that it does slow speed crawling even more significantly better. Turnouts also seem to be much less likely to stop it now. I suppose while previously the small stutters due to short loss of contact stopped it because of more friction, it now rolls over those stutters more easily and regains contact. Same goes for generally any loss of contact over bumps and such.

[cteno4]

Woo hoo! Like the old commercial ran, “A little dab will do ya!”
 

Well that was grease for your hair, but applies to our model trains as well!

 

always love when a train goes to that nice purrrr.

 

jeff

[Dinosbacsi]

Definitely. It started off as a really poor peformer, which bothered me a lot, but thanks to your guys' assistance it finally runs fine, so thanks again.

 

It's really nice to see it run this smoothly. And so I guess that's a case closed then.