pair of gp-9 for 24 bucks.

[danielsokyrail]

I recently picked up a pair of old athearn gp 9 locos. They were in a box of parts under a table and the man selling them ended up pricing them for 14 bucks cause they didnt run. I brought them home and found a tangled mess of wires inside so i fixed that and to my surprise they both run fine. I painted them for a local shortline railroad and a friend of mine decaled them for me for 10 bucks. Im still not finised with them yet. they are in line for leds and possibly dcc.

[diesel]

Nice score! Are you gonna keep them as is or do one in a modified skirt version?
You wouldn't put a mashima or something like that in them?

The Kato 'project motor' can be had at an online discount shop for $15 these days. Sometimes the BB motor isn't bad, but I found spraying the motor down with electrical contact cleaner really smooths them out better than anything else. Just use a plastic safe version.

-The thing about the Athearn Blue Box is that they can almost always either be fixed or go into the spare parts pile.

[icghogger]

Sweet Deal, Daniel, that's recycling at its best!!

[kcs1967]

12 buck each, now that is an extremely economical find!!

[cbq2bn]

Really nice deal, parts alone are worth three times that,
But the thing I love about Athearn, No matter how long they sat or how bad they were treated, a couple minutes of your time and they can run like new....

[sd45longhoodfoward]

great score and like CB2Ban said if an Athene doesn't run it is really something wrong lol i haven't seen an athearn i couldn't get running with a cleaning of the stator& brush.s i usually take a track cleaner to it and to break in the gears for a smooth quieter running put tooth paste in gears and worm gear run 20 Min's or so on a roller system or small test rack wash them out re lube )note run in both directions) 15-20 Min's each.you wouldn't believe what a difference it makes or if you have time file each gear at the top to a slight angle =quieter smoother i prefer Colgate plain!it works wonders on your teeth to.are those 2 the old style with the way out of scale wide hoods Not a rivet counter by any means here i may have a few of those shells i will give away have look in my jungle of an attic a man could lost in mine lol

[captselkirk77]

Back in the day when the athearns were the best engines i could get there was some tricks I use to do to them,one of the better tricks i found was,the flywheels are out of balance big time,I made a jig that held the motor down an spun the flywheels under its own power,I had a homemade lath set up using old exact-o blades as cutter head, I started doing it by hand first witch works also ,just have to have a steady hand an it takes a bit longer,paint the flywheel with black marker,when you start you can see that 25- 50% of the flywheel is contacting the blade proving how much it is out of round. Once you got the weights back in to round you will notice a big difference in noise /vibration. After this you may want to rewire an work on cooling the motor, as they tend to lose power when the get hot. with these mods an the others listed by other members you can have a pretty sweet running engine, after the hands on work to these engines they tend to become some of my favorite an most enjoyed runners

[cbq2bn]

I love my Athearns.... or I wouldn't have over a hundred of them lol....

Goodd tip on the flywheels though, I'll have to try this one day.
I use to have a right up in a yahoo group on rebuilding Athearns the way I did um. about a minute overhaul from start to finnish if you didn't mess around, I'll have to see if it is there and post it here.

[danielsokyrail]

yeah sd45longhoodforward they are the old style.
Thanks for all the tips on those athearns. These two actually run fairly quiet for what they are,, but i have a few of the old ones that make all kinds of racket.

[cbq2bn]

I have one that is a GP35, if you get enough load on it so it will slip the wheels, it really sounds like a real engine notched up, it is so cool..
But I did find that right up I did in march 2001, I'll find a place and post it here before yahoo changes over everythign and it's lost.

[krobar]

You really can't go wrong with an old Athearn. Even the older non-flywheel drives that can be updated with flywheels work good when you spend the time. I just bought an Athearn powered Lionel HO Virginian rectifyer loco at the Merchants Square (Allentown, PA) train show on Saturday. It has the very early geared drive, when I tested it, it still ran, just needs a good cleaning. I don't plan on changing anything with this loco because of the collector value, but it's a good example of a well engineered design.

[quadk]

Great deal there. Looks great all painted up and decaled.

[stewarttrains98]

looking really good for the price that was paid for those units.

[captselkirk77]

another motor tip I forgot,If you want to get evin more technical , I had noticed that the brushes are moving up an down as the commutator turns, it "commutator" is not round, if you can spin the armature and with a micro file remove the high spots then re polish it smooth, the trick is to do this without being too aggressive an taking too much off.If done correctly you can remove the buzzing noise from these motors.
An if this goes horribly wrong ,you now have a legit excuse to remoter your train ,LOL,this can be a fun also.
I have had hours of enjoyment learning/ working on an upgrading old atherns