Suggestions for BLI E7 replacement gears?

[robertjohndavis]

Hi -  Over the years I have had gears fail on Broadway Limited N-scale E7's and have replaced then with BLI gears. I had a couple of more fail and was wondering if anyone has found a replacement product that might stand up better? Thank in advance - Rob

[nkalanaga]

Northwest Shortline might have something, but one would have to know the exact specifications of the gears.

[peteski]

Which gears are failing, and what is the failure?

I own couple of BLI E7s, but I have not had a chance to run them much. I often hear about their electrical pickup problems, but I don't recall anybody mentioning gear failures.

[MEC_FAN]

Robert, I've had the same problem and now need to replace gears again, I'd like to replace the whole truck assembly but they don't sell the whole assembly just the parts.
I also changed my wheelsets because the plating wore off and I wanted to get rid of the traction tires which made them run much better. I'm considering seeing if the shells will fit on a Kato E-8 chassis and getting rid of these things. I put my LL E-7 shells on Katos and they run so sweet!!!

[peteski]

I would still like to find out which specific gears, and how those gears fail.  Please.

[MEC_FAN]

Peteski,  a couple of the small idler gears # 74 and # 73 also. The teeth seem to strip off and then wouldn't drive the wheelsets. I have one unit now that one truck won't drive.
When i got the new gears some of them were bad out of the package like they weren't machined or molded right. They sent me more and I finally got enough good ones to put it back together. Every time I take one off these apart I seem to break the wire that's soldered to the wiper plate # 76 off and have to re solder it on, what a pain!!!

[peteski]

Peteski,  a couple of the small idler gears # 74 and # 73 also. The teeth seem to strip off and then wouldn't drive the wheelsets. I have one unit now that one truck won't drive.
When i got the new gears some of them were bad out of the package like they weren't machined or molded right. They sent me more and I finally got enough good ones to put it back together. Every time I take one off these apart I seem to break the wire that's soldered to the wiper plate # 76 off and have to re solder it on, what a pain!!!

Thanks MEC_FAN.  The teeth actually get stripped?  That's really bad.  #74 is meshing with the worm, so if anything I would suspect that gear to be prone to its plastic teeth being stripped by the brass worm.  But that would likely not occur unless there was some extra resistance in the truck's mechanism.

I'm really surprised that the small idler gears can also end up with stripped teeth - those only mesh with other plastic gears.

I'm also not a fan of wired trucks either - Kato's design is much easier to service.

[Teditor]

I read this with interest, I am an N Scaler but have a small roster of HO/OO to run on the clubs HO/OO layout, one is a BLI C&O M1 2-10-4.
Strangely enough it ripped a tooth off an idler gear (Plastic on Plastic, I have also replaced the decoder once (gone again it seems) and replaced the traction tyre driver with a plain one, now it doesn't like right turns (30" minimum).

Also have one of the N scale Heavy mikado's, kept throwing the traction tyres and the sound drops out as if a continuous loop with bad end to end connections.

Ted (Teditor) Freeman
SP in the land down under.