Over several months I have suffered problems with my WC Clovelly in that the crank fouls the coupling rods on both sides. The problem is bad enough that the piston guides get damaged and now the rear driving wheels have become detached from the axle! This loco was new last year. A similar incident has occured with the Lady Patricia whose gear suddenly fell to pieces ( this was also a "new" loco) but I have sucessfully repaired /rebuilt that. Call me suspicious but both of these units were bargins from a well known seller and I am suspicious that some of the "recycled" failure stories may have some substance.
Collapsing valve gear.
Dec 30, 2008
3 Replies
my suspicions were cnfirmed when a friend of mine received one with a partial repaint job.
Cheers, Simon
"Sailor" wrote
This was fairly common fault with many of the early Hornby 'Superdetailed' loco drive models. In my humble opinion the etched valve gear was too 'soft' and bent at the slightest hint of mis-handling, causing it to tangle up.
More recent releases don't seem to be quite as prone as earlier ones.
For comparison reasons, Bachmann stamp their valve gear components, and consequently they are more resiliant to being handled.
Whenever we're returned a loco to Hornby with this issue, the chassis has been repaired or replaced without charge.
John.
Yes, I would agree John. I have also found (in the WC case) that the sprung axle block on the rear wheels has excessive wear in the slide way which allows the rear axle to rock in a transverse plane. This is a surprise considering the very few hours run.
Regards
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