BLI redesigned their SD40-2 because.... why?

[spookshow]

I see that my Paragon4 NW2 also has wired trucks now. Can anyone tell me if the Paragon4 SD70ACe and F3/F7 releases received the same treatment?

Thanks,
-Mark

[robert3985]

Y'know, I've never considered hard-wired trucks & wipers to be a problem.   I've never had any break, although on some of my old brass engines when purchased used, I had to re-solder a few while test running and tuning.

As far as cleaning wheels is concerned, I too do the run-one-truck-on-the-wet-towel thing, the do the other truck.  I'm not picky about non-powered wheels, but if they get particular gunky, I use a microbrush soaked in cleaner, invert and hand rotate the unpowered wheelset. 

I also use my Kadee Speedi Driver Cleaner, which polishes up things pretty fast,

But, if I were regularly taking engines apart to write reviews on them, I see where unsoldering and soldering wires just to take trucks off might be problematic, but in my real world train running, I rarely take my diesel trucks off...usually only once when having to modify a chassis for installing a speaker, keep-alive and decoder.

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore

[thomasjmdavis]

Exactly, you very nicely expanded on this topic.
 Often the wires are soldered using a acidic flux, which will cause corrosion.  The other big problem is when the insulation is stripped, often some of the copper strands in the wire get nicked. That, along with the fact that there is no strain relief at the point the wire is soldered or crimped into a connector, makes that a weak spot which will likely fail prematurely.

@peteski
Sorry to reach back to a comment of yours that's 2 months old, but this thread jumped up to the top this morning, and I did a quick read through.
If found the statement "Often the wires are soldered using a acidic flux," pretty damning. I've never encountered this in model trains. But given the issues we seem to commonly encounter with the current "lowest bidder" philosophy of the importers of Chinese manufactured trains, it doesn't surprise me.

Are there one or more companies that are allowing acid flux through their specification and quality control processes?

Back in my day....well, we all learned to use rosin flux or rosin core solder in the Heathkits instructions or just from the local hobby retailer, when we bought our soldering irons.

[kscessandriver]

I see that my Paragon4 NW2 also has wired trucks now. Can anyone tell me if the Paragon4 SD70ACe and F3/F7 releases received the same treatment?

Thanks,
-Mark

As far as I can tell, it appears my Paragon4 SD70ACe and F7 have wired trucks.

[spookshow]

Thanks for the info, I guess that's the new normal for BLI now.

-Mark

[peteski]

@peteski
Sorry to reach back to a comment of yours that's 2 months old, but this thread jumped up to the top this morning, and I did a quick read through.
If found the statement "Often the wires are soldered using a acidic flux," pretty damning. I've never encountered this in model trains. But given the issues we seem to commonly encounter with the current "lowest bidder" philosophy of the importers of Chinese manufactured trains, it doesn't surprise me.

Are there one or more companies that are allowing acid flux through their specification and quality control processes?

I remember that the Mehano-made locos in the '70s and '80s had their rats nest of wires soldered using some sort of acidic flux. As for more contemporary models, I believe that the BLI Centipedes had the truck wires soldered to the frames using acidic flux.  The thing is that the effects of the acid do no show up until few years after soldering, so we won't really know what type of flux was used until some time in the future.

Either way, when loco mechanisms are designed to be wire-free, that eliminates the possibility of using the wrong flux, and makes servicing easier.  Thank you Kato and (until recently) Atlas.

[thomasjmdavis]

I remember that the Mehano-made locos in the '70s and '80s had their rats nest of wires soldered using some sort of acidic flux. As for more contemporary models, I believe that the BLI Centipedes had the truck wires soldered to the frames using acidic flux.  The thing is that the effects of the acid do no show up until few years after soldering, so we won't really know what type of flux was used until some time in the future.

Either way, when loco mechanisms are designed to be wire-free, that eliminates the possibility of using the wrong flux, and makes servicing easier.  Thank you Kato and (until recently) Atlas.

Thanks for the response. I followed the advice of several hobby shop owners and avoided Mehano locos altogether, back in the day. I recently acquired one as part of a collection of parts, but it was accurately represented as "parts". I will test it one of these days, so see if it functions at all. As for the Centipede, 'expensive and difficult to maintain' is prototypically accurate, so maybe that was just BLI's way of being true to prototype.

At any rate, thanks for filling in those blanks for me. I bought a spool of Kester's 44 resin core 50 years ago, still have half of it. Should last me the rest of my life, even if I have to re-do solder joints on all my locos. Although the vast majority are Kato and Atlas wire free versions- any wires in them are decoder connections installed using the aforementioned Kester 44. And my Intermountain locos predate their "wired" decoder installs.