# How to silence an older Atlas (Ajin) VO-1000



## Never Get Old (Apr 16, 2016)

Wow, I bought one of these to convert to a dummy yard slug, but before I did that, I wanted to see if I could figure out what made it sound like gravel in the mechanism. What a mess Ajin made of this loco. Atlas later moved production to China, and I hope, fixed these problems.

Here is what I did for 4-5 hours to fix this loco.

There were multiple quality control issues.

1) The bearings on this loco are made from bronze. Any time there is metal-metal contact it is going to cause a little noise unless it's handled properly. On this loco, only one worm gear had a washer between it and the bearing (factory defect), causing one worm to rub on the bearing and make an awful grinding sound. All of my other Atlas locomotives use a plastic bearing and a plastic washer between the worms and the bearings. I had a few of these plastic washers, so I installed one in front of each worm.

2) The old grease (where the factory even used it) was hardened. I removed the linkages and the worms and bearings and the trucks and soaked them all in alcohol. Then I used a toothbrush to get the crud off.

3) The pickup wheel wipers in one truck were malformed. Another factory defect. They have to be perfectly straight or curved very slightly inward. One was rubbing on the wheels due to being malformed.

4) Trucks I lubricated with 0W-20 synthetic motor oil, which is what most new cars use these days, so I have it on hand. It does not harm plastic, and I have used it for years.

5) Worms and bearings and drive linkages I lubricated with SuperLube synthetic grease with PTFE. It also does not harm plastic or ever harden.

6) The malformed longitudinal bronze contact strips were rubbing on the wheel flanges, another factory defect. It took me a long time to figure out, and the contact strips require extremely specific and precise alignment to eliminate the problem, but I finally got it. If I were going to run the loco I would put a tiny dot of superglue in the center of the contact strip behind the fuel tank to make sure they don't shift out of place but could still be removed if broken.

Pretty bad quality control, eh? These were made in Korea. I suspect Atlas had some of these issues corrected in the later Chinese runs or at least had better quality control. Who knows. Other runs may contain noisy ones too.

I don't know why I spent 4-5 hours fiddling with this since I likely will turn it into a gutted dummy slug. I guess I was just curious about what went wrong, and I wanted to learn. I did learn a lot.

-Never Get Old


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