# Guidance Needed on Traction Tires



## marcumg (Aug 24, 2020)

Hello everyone,

I am fairly new to the model train hobby and have several old Lifelike and Bachmann engines. I have taken them apart and tried to clean the wheels and the pickups. After this basic service, I am finding that they have little pulling power (understanding they are entry level locomotives--limited in their ability/function). Before investing in a more expensive engine such as an Atlas or Walthers, I was looking to improve these locomotives by replacing the traction tires. This may be a dumb question, but which of the wheels on a truck can tires be installed? You can see where the old tires are installed, but does it do any good to add tires to any of the other wheels as well? I am unfamiliar with the tire concept (as kids, we just put them on the tracks and they ran). Any advice is appreciated. Thanks, marcumg


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## vette-kid (May 2, 2020)

I'm fairly new as well, but I've refurbished a few older locomotives. The traction tires only fit on the wheels designed for them. They have a little groove in them for the rubber band. You might try cleaning the old grease around the gears and journals on the motor and relube them. If the wheels are slipping, try new rubber, the old stuff may be too hard to give much traction. Otherwise you might add some weight to the locomotive. 

What type of motors are in them? The pancake motors probably won't pull a ton of cars, but they should pull a few. And they can be silly fast

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## Old_Hobo (Feb 20, 2014)

Note....you can’t put traction tires on wheels that pick up power, because then they won’t pick up power.....

Also, traction tires sit in a groove in the wheel, so wheels without that groove can’t be used for traction tires....

If it were me, I’d bit the bullet and buy better locomotives, ones without traction tires.....you’d be much happier with the result....


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## MichaelE (Mar 7, 2018)

Not neccessarily.


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## CTValleyRR (Jul 26, 2014)

Generally, as Old Hobo said, you would need to put traction tires only on the wheels designed for them -- the ones with the grooves for them. Yes, you might be able to add them to other wheels, but you might not. 

Traction tires are easy to replace. You can buy replacements, or use Bullfrog Snot (fancy rubber cement) or even orthodontic elastics for replacements, but the fact is that the traction tires probably aren't what's holding your locos back.

If your locos have been sitting for years, the lubricants have probably dried up. You should clean all the gears, motor bushings, and drive train components and relibricate them with hobby lubricants (common household ones may attack plastic). And then there are the motors themselves. Modern 5 pole can motors with brass flywheels work much better than the old pancake ones, but remotoring a loco requires a little technical know how.


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## sjm9911 (Dec 20, 2012)

Also helps to clen the track! A clean track is a happy track.


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## 65446 (Sep 22, 2018)

Cut you losses and, if you can, buy new, state of the art locos.. No matter how much effort you put into those oldies it's likely they will never run well anyway...


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## vette-kid (May 2, 2020)

telltale said:


> Cut you losses and, if you can, buy new, state of the art locos.. No matter how much effort you put into those oldies it's likely they will never run well anyway...


They are hot and miss. I've got one that runs pretty well. It takes a good but of juice to get going, but goes well from there. Usually it just gets a little tap from behind to get it going. But it will run all day with 6 or 8 cars behind it. Actually I've got two in that category, although one is better than the other. Then I've got two that I can't seem to get running smooth to save my life. All of them are on kid duty and are great for starter trains. Now that my oldest has shown to be responsible with them and very interested, I've graduated him to a blue box upgraded with a genesis motor.

But I agree, they aren't likely a long term solution to much of anything. Good starters to Guage interest and to watch them go into warp speed.

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## marcumg (Aug 24, 2020)

Thanks for everyone's reply. I do plan to buy a better engine, but the reason I wanted to see if the old ones could run better is more nostalgia than anything else. The Bachmann I have ran on my train set in the late 1970s. The box still has the old price tag on it where I bought it from Murphy's Mart. Some of the Life Like engines my late Uncle purchased in the 1980s/90s. I noticed by looking at these Like Likes that they did not have tires on them. The wheels look almost too small (across). Has anyone tried to put a tires on them? I have the ones with the Pancake motor made in Yugoslavia-Chessie like the B&O 4810 below. (not my pic, but I have the same one--nice looking engine). Although it does not look like much, but this is my Bachmann (second one below) This one has the rubber tire on it and It wants to run, but I call it my "Drunk" engine because it has no grip at all to a clean track--and I have clean the wheels 2 or 3 times. The track goes one way--it wants to go the other. It is just "sloppy".


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## marcumg (Aug 24, 2020)

I wonder if the Like Life B&O engine has the "groove" where the tire will fit on the wheel.


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## mesenteria (Oct 29, 2015)

If you place anything thicker than about a sheet of printer paper over any driver other than the ones with the grooved tire, you will cause that tire to ride up higher than the others due to the increased diameter. In turn, it will probably, not absolutely, change the distance between the crank pins sufficiently that the steamer will develop a hitch in its giddyup. Yes, there is some slop purposefully designed into our toys so that they go around curves and uneven trackage quite a bit more forgiving than the prototype, but....I think you'll find the thickness of a traction tire will be too much.


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## MichaelE (Mar 7, 2018)

Installing a traction tire on a wheel not designed for it is not good for electrical contact of the other wheels. As Mesenteria stated, the wheels will not ride at the same height.


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## Old_Hobo (Feb 20, 2014)

For other than nostalgia, old Life-Like and Bachmann locomotives are a waste of time, and money, in trying to get them to run like they should....I know, each to his own, but I’ll bet there are lots and lots of people here who agree with me.....

Now, newer Proto 2000 locomotives by Life-Like, and today’s Bachmann engines are a completely different story....excellent engines!


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## vette-kid (May 2, 2020)

Old_Hobo said:


> For other than nostalgia, old Life-Like and Bachmann locomotives are a waste of time, and money, in trying to get them to run like they should....I know, each to his own, but I’ll bet there are lots and lots of people here who agree with me.....
> 
> Now, newer Proto 2000 locomotives by Life-Like, and today’s Bachmann engines are a completely different story....excellent engines!


Nah, like I said they are great starter locomotives for kids. My 7 year old has graduated up to nicer stuff, but the two and four year olds still play with the old pancake motor engines. I don't worries about them breaking it

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## 65446 (Sep 22, 2018)

*marcumg,* my honest opinion is, you are trying to push a rope....It jus t'aint worth it, what with the 40-60 year old design archaic, motors, mechanisms, and horn-hook couplers these engines have..
If you are calling yourself a toy train collector, then fine..But if you are calling yourself a model railroader you are starting out with very problematic equipment that potentially can cause you to give up on the the whole thing, believing this is the way it has to be when it doesn't have to be this way at all !!


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## marcumg (Aug 24, 2020)

telltale said:


> *marcumg,* my honest opinion is, you are trying to push a rope....It jus t'aint worth it, what with the 40-60 year old design archaic, motors, mechanisms, and horn-hook couplers these engines have..
> If you are calling yourself a toy train collector, then fine..But if you are calling yourself a model railroader you are starting out with very problematic equipment that potentially can cause you to give up on the the whole thing, believing this is the way it has to be, when it doesn't have to be this way at all !!


You are probably right, but another issue I have is converting my box cars to Kadee couplings. Like my engines, my rolling stock is pretty old--with horn-hook couplers. I have looked a lot on Ebay, and I could have bought some new in the box locomotives, but because of the degree of difficulty of some conversions.....you have to be good with a drill. One conversion process was posted by DCCTRAIN 



. I though this was kind of interesting. He still drilled a screw in at the end.


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

If all of your stock are horn-hook, you only need to convert ONE end of ONE car to a kadee in order to pull everything with a newer loco. Fit one end of a car with a kadee coupler, leave the other with a horn-hook, and you can pull the whole train that way.


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## vette-kid (May 2, 2020)

Shdwdrgn said:


> If all of your stock are horn-hook, you only need to convert ONE end of ONE car to a kadee in order to pull everything with a newer loco. Fit one end of a car with a kadee coupler, leave the other with a horn-hook, and you can pull the whole train that way.


We have a mix of locos and I do this as well. Works great

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## time warp (Apr 28, 2016)

Careful there, boys. I'm still running a lot of 40 to 50 year old RTR stuff on our railroad, and they hold up just fine.
Calumet traction tires are the way to go. Goody's bands won't last (trust me).
Most Mehano or Kenda-San , and some Kader, HO diesels can use the Calumet 505.
Tyco Powertorques use the 515.
Old MU-2 Tyco locos require O-rings. I can look up the size if anybody wants to know.


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

I have a 70's Mantua 0-4-0 that I converted to DCC and added wipers to the tender wheels, and that thing will crawl at low speed steps better than some of my brand new locos. I haven't even cleaned the motor since picking it up off ebay but the thing has been run so much that there is a groove cut in the drivers. If one of the cheapest locos ever made can still run that smooth 50 years later then there isn't the slightest bit of truth in the mantra that older locos aren't worth the effort.


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## Old_Hobo (Feb 20, 2014)

My uncle smoked 2 packs a day, and lived to the age of 96.....but that just shows there’s an exception to every rule.....


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## MichaelE (Mar 7, 2018)

I hope they weren't Camel's at $11.60 a pack.

I used to buy (when I smoked) Marlboro for $3.20 a carton at the Commissary in the early 80's.


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## Old_Hobo (Feb 20, 2014)

He was an old poor farmer, so he rolled his own with “Black Cat” Tobacco back in the 1950’s.....so he didn’t spend that much....


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## Boiler-man-UP (Mar 15, 2020)

marcumg said:


> Hello everyone,
> 
> I am fairly new to the model train hobby and have several old Lifelike and Bachmann engines. I have taken them apart and tried to clean the wheels and the pickups. After this basic service, I am finding that they have little pulling power (understanding they are entry level locomotives--limited in their ability/function). Before investing in a more expensive engine such as an Atlas or Walthers, I was looking to improve these locomotives by replacing the traction tires. This may be a dumb question, but which of the wheels on a truck can tires be installed? You can see where the old tires are installed, but does it do any good to add tires to any of the other wheels as well? I am unfamiliar with the tire concept (as kids, we just put them on the tracks and they ran). Any advice is appreciated. Thanks, marcumg


Get some Bull Frog Snot (BFS) check the internet for info on it.
I have been using it instead of traction tire replacement and the traction with BFS is better than with factory traction tires.


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## Jscullans (Jul 8, 2019)

I’m getting into brass locos now and have found that the old locos CAN run as good or better than some of the newer models. I have a United atsf 2-10-4 that I installed a cannon dn-22 motor in and installed dcc in it and programmed it and that loco can crawl or go flat out with a 60+ car train behind it. It all depends on how far you really want to go with the locomotives. Anything can and will work if you throw enough money, time, and effort at it. The main thing is would the locomotive in question be worth the effort. If you plan on going dcc northwest short line offers 4 wheel Stanton drives that have excellent low and high speed operation. A guy I know has an sw1500 he re powered with them and I re powered my brass pioneer zephyr with one. The Stanton drives are some what steep in price though so keep it in mind that the drive itself would cost 10 times what the locos can be gotten for on eBay. Personally I would cut my losses and get better locos and shelf the ones you have as a display or something. As far as going with a kadee style coupler on rolling stock I get draft gear boxes and body mount all my couplers instead of keeping them truck mounted. Passenger cars I leave but freight I body mount. Draft gear boxes are cheap and I just glue them in place with extra thin cement by tamia or however you spell their name and testors makes a good one too. Once again how far do you want to go with modifications on something that’s not worth a bunch of money. To each their own though. If its worth it to you do what feels right


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## traction fan (Oct 5, 2014)

Shdwdrgn said:


> If one of the cheapest locos ever made can still run that smooth 50 years later then there isn't the slightest bit of truth in the mantra that older locos aren't worth the effort.


 Shdwdrgn;

You may never have experienced the "consummate joy" of trying to run the N-scale locomotives from that era.
There was, and still is, plenty of truth that those old locos weren't worth the effort. They often needed a hand push to get started at all, their minimum speed was way to fast for switching, and their maximum scale speed was faster than some 12" to the foot scale airplanes! The best thing to do with these clunkers was to pick them up, hold them over the nearest wastebasket, and let go! 
Although using them as roundhouse decorations or clay pigeons, were two alternatives. 

Traction Fan


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## time warp (Apr 28, 2016)

I find it fascinating that so many questions asked here are answered with "It's junk" or "Buy a new one".
How encouraging. Bravo.


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## x_doug_x (Jun 21, 2010)

Did you get oil on the traction tires at all? Are the traction tires still there on these loco's? Next, do your freight cars roll freely or require a good little push by themselves? The locos above (even though they are cheap) should pull 5-6 or 7 cars fine, anything more than that might be pushing it a little. You shouldn't have to push it to pull 5 cars that roll freely. After reading this thread I see a lot of people hating on cheaper loco's, but I don't think i've ever burnt up a old pancake (bachmann)motor loco in my life unless I got oil on the armature. The tyco's are a little different story.


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## x_doug_x (Jun 21, 2010)

(time warp) Those old mantua open armature motors are practically bulletproof.


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## traction fan (Oct 5, 2014)

time warp said:


> I find it fascinating that so many questions asked here are answered with "It's junk" or "Buy a new one".
> How encouraging. Bravo.


 While I'm happy to hear that your fascinated, (We all need a little fascination now and then.)
sometimes, replacement, rather than rebuilding, is the best advice one can give. (& Sometimes it's just humor.)
It depends on what the OP has, not only in the model he's starting with, but the amount of experience & skill, he has, or more often, does not have.
Many of our questions come from "newbies" who barely know one type of locomotive from another.
Should we who have "been there, and done that" really tell them to disassemble their problem locomotive and look for "whatever's broken" when we know from our own experience, that the real problem is the basic design of the locomotive? If we do so, are we really "helping" the OP, or simply adding to his frustration?

A three-pole, cheap motor, combined with a way-too-high-gear-ratio, and no flywheels, isn't something I would now try to fix myself, even after decades of model railroad experience. Oh, I have tried, but seldom succeeded, short of replacing the motor, and trying to add better gearing. Note that I deal with N-scale models, not HO, where you can simply order Northwest Short Line's "remotoring and regearing commercial kit # 2304" designed & built to fit the specific Athearn/whatever loco you're having problems with. If I want gears I have to scrounge them from toys.
Also, I can't just buy pre-made S.P.U.D.s, or Hobbytown drives, to mount in an N-scale locomotive, for the good and simple reason that they don't exist in N-scale. After trying for years to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, I learned that Kato could make a whole lot better mechanism than I could.
That lesson wasn't easy on my pride. I've spent a lifetime fixing electro-mechanical things, both to earn a living, and for my hobby. When my daughters were young, my wife taught them the old cliche "Daddys can fix anything." Given my profession, I could usually come through on that. Probably more often than say accountants, or lawyers could. But the simple truth is that nobody can fix everything.

 Since you apparently enjoy making old clunkers run better, by all means go ahead and enjoy what you like doing, and Bravo to you.
However, please also recognise that everyone does not enjoy that, and many people, including many of our OPs, truly can't do that, at least not yet. They simply don't have the skill you have, the experience you have, or probably the desire you have.

As for those who advise someone to replace a lousy locomotive, turnout, whatever, with something that will actually work reliably right out of the box, so what? They are telling the OP what they feel is the best thing for him to do in his circumstances. That's not some sort of "hobby treason" it's just their advice & opinion, based on their experience. 

There is no panel of olympic judges rating any of us on how many old locomotives we refurbished, or the degree of difficulty involved in each case. That's simply your thing, which is fine, but not for everyone.

Some people like to climb mountains, some people have walked across Death Valley, somebody, somewhere, has probably tried moving the ocean with a bucket, or even with a teaspoon. That doesn't mean everybody should do so, or think that if they don't, they should be ashamed for not doing so.

Traction Fan


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

traction fan said:


> They often needed a hand push to get started at all, their minimum speed was way to fast for switching, and their maximum scale speed was faster than some 12" to the foot scale airplanes!


I've always been strictly HO scale, however there's a lot of truth to what you say regarding the stuff I grew up with. The 0-4-0 I had as a kid may be the same model as the one I have now, and both of them were race cars that scream around the track at full throttle. That's why I bring up that this little loco not only is geared to run fast (I learned early on not to run my trains at full throttle because they would tip over when going around curves), but somehow it also can crawl at respectably slow speeds when run under DCC.

Nearly all of my locos at the time required a push-start more often than I was happy with, however that was (and still is) an issue with contact between the track and wheels, or because the motors were wearing out. The only time I remember the motor itself stalling out was when the armature contacts needed a good cleaning. We definitely have a lot better quality tiny motors available these days so I can imagine older N scale being a real problem. I thought this thread was about an HO scale loco though?


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## marcumg (Aug 24, 2020)

Thanks for all of your comments. It's great to get a thread like this going and have so many comment--sometimes, you learn a lot about what you trying to do.


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