Intermountain F7 to much grease


NYC_George

Well-Known Member
I was telling a friend of mine I ordered a new Intermountain F7 from Ebay. He said, the ones he ordered were so packed with grease they wouldn't move. I already have 2 of these locos and they were fine so I wasn't worried but it came yesterday and it wouldn't move. It's new and should be moving. I know the decoder works so I remove one of the trucks and it's packed with hard green grease. Why this happened I don't know. Has it been in the cold for a long time? I took out the worm gear and soaked in in alcohol then used a stiff brush on it and still couldn't remove it all. I finally got it to run but not real well. Now I have it sitting on the furnace hopeing to warm up what ever is in the gear box. Maybe that will work?

George
 
Hope you don't come back to find a big greasy blob on the furnace :(. I got an IM SD40 from a late production run that oozed grease out of the axles after just a short run. If the trucks on those F7's are similarly made to the SD40 ones, getting the cover off the bottom is a little tricky.
 
The heat helped. It didn't run bad after a few hours on the furnace. I have a tray there for my golf balls which go real well in the winter when you warm them up.

George
 
I would say to fully disasemble the trucks, thoroughly clean them (try WD-40 as a grease remover) and the lubing properly.
 
I would say to fully disasemble the trucks, thoroughly clean them (try WD-40 as a grease remover) and the lubing properly.

Your probably right but Intermountain trucks are not the easiest to disassemble. I forgot about WD_40. I'll take out the worm gear again and spray some on before I add a lighter grease. Thanks. The furnace was a big help to loosen things up. I been looking for a NYC Intermountain B unit for a while. It could have been sitting in cold storage for years?

George
 
You're right about their trucks, some very tiny locaters, that can be easily broken off if you're not sure of how they come apart.
 
Try warm water to loosen the grease and then soak in alcohol until clean.

Greg

I don't no about water Greg unless I was going to disassemble the gear box. This is not an Atlas gear box. I'm not going to do that in fear I'll never get it back together again. I did put some light oil in the gear box before putting it on the furnace. It's almost working like it should at the moment.

George
 



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