HO Climax Repair

[EBradbury]

Hi
I have a HO Climax that has no more then 3 hours of operation on it when it developed a "hitch".  Apparently the drive gear and axle gear are not meshing and are jamming, and the front drive slip joint is always falling out.  I bought it up at the Amhearst (Springfield, Mass) train show a year ago.

I sent the Climax to Bachmann to be repaired on January 29, 2008 and called them today to be told they  haven't gotten to it yet and when they do there are no parts.  Just great!  Service?  Apparently they have a lot of returned stuff that needs fixin'.

Reading some of the other posts is there seems to be a serious flaw in the loco design and manufacturing and it is not giving me a warm fuzzy feeling that the Climax will be repaired.

It looks like they didn't do the design, engineering or quality control very well.

BTW.  I noted that there are others with the drive problems.  Has anyone tried using North West Short Line gears and other parts to repair the drives?  How about MDC shay universals?

[Pacific Northern]

I sympathize with you. It appears that locomotives are replaced not fixed. 

There have been several threads from members wanting to obtain parts and from what I understand parts are only available on those units in production. So, if you even could fix the unit the parts are not available.

If the unit is no longer in production you are out of luck. I have a couple of the light mountains and I know if I have a problem and ship one of them to Bachmann I will only be allowed to trade it for something that is in current production.

[WoundedBear]

I feel your pain as well. I lost one from my fleet to a "no parts" situation.

They replaced mine with a Shay, and my second Climax is still running, although I limit her loads and speed quite severely now.

If you really want to keep her, I would suggest holding on to it and wait until they do another production run. As popular as they seemed to be, I would hope Bachmann is considering another run soon.

Sid

[Beatle (TrainBrain)]

I've got a different situation with my Climax, and I'm sorry to say, it's much simpler. It needs more weight. I've already got a caboose hooked up to it for sound, and other than the speaker it's hollow. Just needs weight.

Wow...I'm going to inspect my Climax now.

[Frisco]

I ha the same problem with mine , not to say that it could not pull more than one car around 18" track . So I sent it back to Bachmann and asked for a shay which I have been very happy with .