Athearn revamp

Discussion in 'New Products' started by Iantha_Branch, Jan 24, 2012.

  1. gjslsffan

    gjslsffan Staff Member Staff Member

    Sure Ryan, I think we can work something out. How many motors are talking here?
     
  2. r c h

    r c h Ft Worth - Tulsa Engineer

    Well, I'd have to do a tally, but I can think of five engines that need help to start off with.

    Just out of curiosity, how do you get the flywheels on and off without damaging the motor shaft?
     
  3. gjslsffan

    gjslsffan Staff Member Staff Member

    I have an old Famco Arbor press with tooling to press the flywheels off and on with out damaging the motor, also have tooling for pressing on and off the bearings. The bearings go on w/o much force the tooling is mainly to press them on straight. Hex drive motors have the flywheels pressed on way too tight IMHO, and sometimes take quite a press to get them off, I have seen as much as a .003 interference fit, meaning the hole in the flywheel is .003 smaller than the diameter of the motor shaft. BB motors are not that tight and some flywheels are actually glued on, in any case, not an issue here.

    029.JPG 030.JPG
     
  4. r c h

    r c h Ft Worth - Tulsa Engineer

    Wow, that is cool, Tom!

    I have some SD40-2s I just went ahead and bought Kato motors for, along with the updated hex drive components to make it all work together. But the older geeps I'm thinking of still have the old style drive and flywheels. By the time you add the cost of the Kato motor and the hex drive components, it's upward of $45 per engine to upgrade, which is a little steep for some of these things. By the time I look at what I've got into them, adding in that Kato upgrade would just make me want to ebay them and replace with Atlas geeps.
     
  5. gjslsffan

    gjslsffan Staff Member Staff Member

    Figure I can redo these BB motors with the bearings for $15.00, The dynamic balancing will be another few bucks If you want that, typically not necessary for folks that run stock geared stuff. I can also add turned NWSL drives for BB (in this case BB means the traditional spline Athearn drive lines) flywheels too. Meaning the NWSL drives are turned to fit into BB flywheels like factory inserts, the rest of the NWSL kit fits the worm gear shaft and you simply cut the male part of the NWSL spline to fit the application (I have found these work very good for BB SD40-2 drives). Geep BB drives, are another story, too much angle for the NWSL stuff to work as good, but I got a trick or two there as well. In my opinion hex drives are the best so far, they seem to work great. What someone needs to do is make hex inserts for BB flywheels, now that would be the ticket.
    Anywaysss
     
  6. gjslsffan

    gjslsffan Staff Member Staff Member

    Ryan
    I have about 30 motors in the works now, if you want to get a few going I will order the bearings and we can drop the price to 10.00 each motor as I can get them bearings cheaper by the 100 lot.
    Between your motors and others as well as mine, I can get 100 of them pretty easy. What I would do is rebuild your motors and send them back to you, I dont have inventory to swap a rebuilt motor for core motors.

    PM me if you want and we can get it rolling.
    Thanks
     

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