Intermountain SD40-2W and Buyer's Remorse?

[Deleted]

I made an impulse buy......

The Canadian National mainline crosses the Rainy River and enters the United States at Baudette, Minnesota. The mainline is closely paralleled by Minnesota Highway 11 before crossing back into Canada a little north or Warroad, Minnesota.

In 1987 or 88 while on vacation driving east on Minnesota Highway 11, I saw a headlight on a westbound CN freight coming towards me. MN 11 has a shoulder as wide as a postage stamp and turn offs are few and far between in the woods. There is no such thing as a crossroad in the section I was driving.

Oh, how I wished I could have stopped and snapped a slide of one of the trailing units. CN SD40-2W 5334, the Expo 86 rainbow unit was in the consist. I normally don't get very excited about CN, but seeing the 5334 in person was special.

When Intermountain announced another run of their CN SD40-2W's, I didn't even look at the pictures of the various schemes. Now fast forward to a few months ago, when on I believe Train Orders I see someone mention Intermountain's doing CN 5334 in full Expo 86 color. I immediately contacted my LHS to see if they could get me one of the models.

My Intermountain SD40-2W with Tsunami sound painted and detailed CN 5334 Expo 86 arrived yesterday. I unpacked the locomotive and gave it a once around the loop test. All was fine and today I looked it over well and put it through more operation tests.

I'll give the model's body and assembly a grade of B+. The lighting which are LED's also gets a B. The locomotive drive is smooth and gets an A. The models pulling power gets a grade of D. I have a track cleaning car in my 12 car freight train. The locomotive could not budge the train. The same train can be pulled by a single Athearn Genesis FP7A.

Now why I'm unhappy with my purchase. OVER LUBRICATION......Holy Crap Batman!!! The whale blubber was oozing out of the gear box at the axle openings. There were globs of grease on the side of gearbox by the worm gear housing. The oil from the gearboxes was creeping everywhere. So I had to clean up the excess grease and may still need to remove the trucks to scoop more grease out.

Its a nice model, but the drive and the grease are a problem.

[bnsf971]

Jim, I have one of these, though not the CN5334. It is pretty light on the rails, but it pulls pretty well. I also had a 12 car train and cleaning car, which it pulled with difficulty until the blackening started to wear off the wheels.
I think part of the problem with yours is the lube oil marinade may have gravitated onto the wheels, making it even less of a puller.

[middledivision]

I have two and the lack of weight is my only concern. The wheels were cleaned with alcohol when I programmed it and it runs fine.

[Brakie]

Whale blubber seems to be a take off from the over lubricated LL P2K locomotives.

One would expect a high end locomotive to be free of whale blubber.

BTW..Maybe you should find a better name then "whale blubber " since such is frowned upon by PETA and the whale huggers.

[bnsf971]

Aug 24, 2012 19:07:51 GMT -8 Brakie said:

Whale blubber seems to be a take off from the over lubricated LL P2K locomotives.

One would expect a high end locomotive to be free of whale blubber.

BTW..Maybe you should find a better name then "whale blubber " since such is frowned upon by PETA and the whale huggers.

I think the over-lubrication is an issue when locomotives have more grease in them than I use to pack the wheel bearings in my truck.
Life Like did that to do three things at the time: quiet the mechanism, make sure the unit had oil in it so it didn't "come back" screeching from lack of lube, and slow down the unit at low speed. Of course, in time in the box, the liquid part of the grease drained out of the trucks, and you wound up with oil all over the inside of the box, the mechanism, and you. This should be old news, since it happened 20 years or so ago, but the manufacturers in China seem to learn slowly. I'd much rather it be packed dry, so I can add lubrication of my choice.

[sd80macs]

I had that issue with the first run of SD40-2W's . I got 3 of them and unfortunatly IM checks all the units which is a good thing but then the wrap them up in the same plastic they came in so when originally wrapped the oil gets all over the plastic sheet where the trucks are and when IM unwrapped them the sheets of plastic got oil everywhere so my units had oil on the shells including the roof. I just washed them carefully and they cleaned right up. Eventually I will have to take them apart and clean out the oil from them and relube them. I have 2 more that should be here today or Mon including the Expo unit so I guess I will have to see how it looks and if they have the same issues.