Boy...Were You Right Ucwepn!

[Super]

First a little back story...

We modified a Trackmaster Hiro into “Not A Hero” as we call him but...his motor, a flat drive, was very noisy. So to increase speed and hopefully quiet the flat drive down at the same time we replaced the motor with a Power Dash. The speed was fantastic but the noise was still there, Figuring it might be just a gearbox issue, we replaced the flat drive with one out of a new Green Salty and installed a Power Dash in it. No luck, still very loud. Now, if you have seen our layout , we can run 14 trains at the same time and it gets very loud in our train room with all of them running. Believe it or not we can hear the “Not A Hero” over all of them. So much so that even my 6 year old Grandson said he couldn't take it any more and turned him off.

Fast forward...

At the old Forum I brought this problem up and Ucwepn noted that the newly released Luke, Yellow Rheneas and Paxton had quiet flat drives....Well I am here to tell ya....”You Were Right Ucwepn”. Fantastic, I watched the 3 YouTube reviews that Ucwepn did and determined that Paxton was the quietest of the 3 and I finally bought one. I have to say that this Paxton has the quietest flat drive that I have ever heard. Problem solved right?...No.... I like the Paxton so much I am going to modify him into something else. So “Not A Hero” will remain in the train yard until such time as I can find another Paxton to bring on board.

Thank you Ucwepn once again your help and experience is invaluable



Poor "Not A Hero" Sits Idle In The Yard...

[Ucwepn]

Hi thats a very interesting tale Beware they can get noisy again after a while but not rattly if they were not previously rattly. I had to glue a cracked gear in my HiT toys Donald as it was making a horrible racket, I also tried adjusting gears on shafts in the hope of quieting it down but alas no. These trains can get fantastically loud at times haha. Upgraded motors can start to sound like power drills hehe.

[Super]

Thanks Ucwepn

I got lucky and managed to pick up a brand new 2012 Luke for $6. Nobody else on Ebay saw it, I guess, for $5.99 and free shipping as I was the only bidder.

This gearing and motor are also very quiet so I immediately swapped out the original motor with a Power Dash and it "Whirred" very nice and fast however there are subtle differences in the housing particularly around the front wheels and it would not fit in the Not A Hero chassis. I would have to do some modification to the housing which I am hesitant to do. I thought about transferring all the gears to the noisy Not A Hero housing but not sure I want to go through all of that and have it remain noisy because its the housings fault.. Then again it may just work so I am mulling it over.

[Ucwepn]

I presume there are wheels attached to one of the drive units? I certainly am not a fan of that!

[Super]

The Not A Hero has a split front axle that the motor housing has to fit over. To accommodate that there is an opening in the housing but the 2012 flat drives were molded differently and has plastic in the way. I am going to see if I can remove it since I have a drive I can experiment with. Also the negative terminal on the 2012 drive is a spring which is better that the old sprung metal tab but the plastic part behind it has to be wider and may also need to be modified (if possible) for the top of Not A Hero to fit on.

out of every engine I have,the most loudest engine's are my hit trackmaster sir handel and my tomy molly.that's the danger of a flat type drive unit.