well i knew beforehand about the cracked gear problem and the easy fix.got a great deal on two proto gp30's.guess what....every axle in both loco's had the gear's cracked.sent an e-mail to customer service at walther's and received an e-mail the next day saying the gear's would be replace.sure enough i received the gear's along with the wheel's four day's later.loco's run great now.larry t at walther's and other's are to be commended IMO for this excellent service.i know sometime's it's hard to get customer service but walther's sure came through for me.:thumb: terry....
LL cracked gears ..alive and well
- Thread starter metalfrog
- Start date
From what I've seen on other boards about the broken gears on P2Ks, it doesn't matter to Walthers where the model was purchased. It's a defect in their product and they are going to stand by their product no matter where or how it was aquired. Sounds like a company that needs our support right? Their service is a whole lot better than another big MR manufacturer who doesn't even carrying any spare parts, especially when they literally fall off. You guys probably know which MR company that is.
does anyone have any pics of these bad gears,,, i have a proto2000 that was real jerky when starting to move from day one,, it finally got so bad i couldnt run it so I tore into it,, I checked all the gears and couldnt find anything that looked bad but might have missed it,,,,, ,thanks,,,, ,,,, ,,,,, ,,,,,,,, st
Ummm...how old are these loco's? Brand new, a few months old. I picked up a couple of new ones. Should I be worried?
cyclingshane73 said:
Good question!
I have heard the more recently issued (vs recently bought!) P2Ks don't have this problem - I would like to hear any evidence yea or nay about this from P2K owners.
walther's own's LL(proto2k) if you buy a proto loco,regardless of where you buy it,walther's will take care of warranty issuse's.the cracked gear's can easily be seen with a magnifier.where the wheel is pushed onto the axle is where the crack usually is.you can also take a very small screwdriver and run the blade around the axle and you'll be able to find the crack easily.terrycoachC said:
All it takes is a hairline crack across the gear. I have a GP30 that had all 4 of the gears cracked. It shook and vibrated so bad that it jumped off the track at low speed!. I had an old Athearn F7 with a burned out motor on the work bench. I just pulled the axle/wheelsets from it and dropped them into the GP30 and it ran perfect. It's been almost a year now and it still runs great.sidetracked said:
ok,,, not to sound too stupid but this crack is actually on the wheels and not in the drive gears that drive the wheels,, ,, is that right,,,,, ,,,,,, ok, maybe that was stupid but just wanted to make sure,,,,,, ,,,,, ,,,,, thanks,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,st
the crack is not on the metal wheel,rather on the plastic hub that the wheel goes into.terry..sidetracked said:
i have a gp18 by proto 2000 ( i do not have my models handy in another country still have to bring back to canada) anyways it had cracked grears, i called life like soon as it stopped running and I arranged for replacement grears to be sent but they decided to have me send my unit back in for repair or replacement. they replaced the broken parts and replaced the detail parts as a whole kit because i had not put any details on the model. i was very pleased with the service and i will buy more of their models
I've got three LL engines, an FA-1, C-liner and an SW1200. No problems with them so far. Is it a problem with all LL engines or just certain ones?
stuart_canada said:
I think they had a batch of gears that were made of the wrong plastic. When they discovered the problem, they changed gears for subsequent production runs, but they know that their are some locos in customer's hands with the bsad gears, and they will fix any that are sent in or send out the gears for the customer to do the repairs on.
I've had to replace the gears on two sets of FA-2 s and two older GP-18s.I just bought a bunch of replacement gears from Athearn to have on hand, I started having problems just after Walthers bought LL and they didn't know where any of the spare parts were. They are cheap enough and it is a lot easier then waiting to get some shipped.
Tom
Tom
Hah! I was looking for this thread yesterday, but couldn't find it. 
I have a GP-7 that I'm repairing for a friend. All four axle gears are split, and I thought that I had seen somewhere that Athearn gears were a drop-in replacement. Never-the-less, I e-mailed Walthers, and hope to hear from them soon. They are to be commended for standing behind this product, especially since the defective gears were on models produced before Walthers' acquisition of Life-Like. :thumb: :thumb:
Wayne
I have a GP-7 that I'm repairing for a friend. All four axle gears are split, and I thought that I had seen somewhere that Athearn gears were a drop-in replacement. Never-the-less, I e-mailed Walthers, and hope to hear from them soon. They are to be commended for standing behind this product, especially since the defective gears were on models produced before Walthers' acquisition of Life-Like. :thumb: :thumb: Wayne
What is the symptom of the problem? One of my NIB P2K GP 9 locos makes this little clunk clunk sound when I run it on the test track I built. It came to my mind that it may have this problem. Does that sound about right?
I'm shooting off an e-mail to Walthers any ways. See if maybe they can help.
I'm shooting off an e-mail to Walthers any ways. See if maybe they can help.
Yeah, that sounds like about the same symptoms as the one I've got, although this one doesn't run well at all: lots of stuttering and quite bouncy.
Walthers replied very promptly to my e-mail and the replacement gears are on the way. :thumb: In my opinion, their reaction to this problem has been a very classy one, and sure to go a long way to keep, or even gain, customers.
If you need to check yours, just flip the loco over (gently ) and use a small screwdriver to pop the cover off the bottom of each truck. you may have to remove each wheelset to find the cracks, which run across the width of the axle, either all or part-way across. Three of mine were split from side-to-side, and the fourth about halfway. Walthers will ask how many wheelsets are split, but I suggest that you replace all of the wheelsets, split or not, as it's only a matter of time before any unsplit ones do split.
Wayne
Walthers replied very promptly to my e-mail and the replacement gears are on the way. :thumb: In my opinion, their reaction to this problem has been a very classy one, and sure to go a long way to keep, or even gain, customers.
If you need to check yours, just flip the loco over (gently
) and use a small screwdriver to pop the cover off the bottom of each truck. you may have to remove each wheelset to find the cracks, which run across the width of the axle, either all or part-way across. Three of mine were split from side-to-side, and the fourth about halfway. Walthers will ask how many wheelsets are split, but I suggest that you replace all of the wheelsets, split or not, as it's only a matter of time before any unsplit ones do split.Wayne