Aristo EMD GP40

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Overview:

A recent loco, following the new Aristo-Craft policy of smaller locos for tighter curves.

Santa Fe only had one of these, and the model has the correct road number. It's a good looking loco, with the standard Aristo "prime mover" gearbox system, except for new motors (more later).

But, after about a year of use, many people have reporting many different problems. The coupler problem was obvious right away. In early 2009, I noticed many posts about failing plating on the wheels. Since Aristo diesel wheels are steel, they will rust and pit quickly, bad power pickup.

In late 2009, there were several reports of the motors literally going up in smoke. The common symptom is the motors start drawing a lot more current than normal, and heat up and smoke. The evidence points to counterfeit motors with poor quality insulation on the motor windings, that is not the proper high temperature enamel, but a cheaper lookalike.

Ted has posted a video that shows one loco drawing 2 amps at 5 volts, and the loco is on rollers! (That is way too much).

Axel Tillman of Train-Li, whose motorized switch machine Aristo-Craft so blatantly copied, noticed this inferior insulation on the Aristo motor in their switch motor clone.

First run (and problems):

This is the first loco made for Aristo-Craft in the "new" Sanda Kan factory. (This was just before Kader bought Sanda Kan). I believe this is the reason for many of the flaws in this loco.

One small detail, there are 2 small holes above the couplers where the MU cable should emerge. The first run did not use these holes, the cable comes out underneath the shell. It's very common for it to drop down, and catch on parts of a switch and get torn off.

Quite a few people have reported couplers "coming apart" on the GP40 where the identical train on another Aristo-Craft loco is fine. It appears that the batch of couplers either have greater knuckle flex, or possibly the castings have "shrunk" more than usual. In any case it's true, and it's the couplers sliding apart sideways, not the knuckles popping open!

In late 2009, I started getting reports of the loco's "burning up". There's now many documented cases of the motors themselves drawing excessive current. In severe cases smoke has come from them.

It sounds like there may be a "lifetime" issues with these motors. Will keep you informed, but if you buy a used GP-40, be sure to watch out for this.

Subsequently, Aristo-Craft has publicly announced they have 1000 replacement motors in stock. Draw whatever inferences you want to, no one get's 1000 "spare" motors.

Be sure to read Ted's vignette on the motor problems and solutions: Ted's Vignette on GP 40 motors

Second run:

Even though marked 2008 on the body shells, there seems to be a variation. The mu cables now come out of the holes in the body shell as it was obviously designed.

Also, the motors appear different. Ed Headington reports that a loco he purchased in December 2011, you no longer can see the cooling fan in the motor "vent hole". There are openings in the motors, but there is no fan visible. This may be a helpful spotting guide, I need more people to confirm these differences.

Electrical considerations:

This loco has a ton of polyswitches. It appears that they are in the battery buss ("mu cable") and on the main board. If you run heavy loads, or use the mu cables to run more than one loco, you will most likely have to bypass these. As always try to protect from shorts. This means an intelligent rewire. In a perfect world, on each of the pickup wires from the trucks would be best, along with one of the leads to the main board, but it's your choice.

Here are some pictures of the circuit boards inside, courtesy of John Burden:

Below is the main board top, with the switches visible:

Below is the same board, but from the underside, you can see the Aristo socket: (the dummy plug is still in the left hand socket)

There are 2 more circuit boards, one in the front:
(notice the 4 pin plug on the right, that comes from the motor block)

There is likewise another circuit board in the rear, see the picture below:

The motor blocks have the 4 wire cable coming from them, as shown below: (following pictures courtesy of R.J. DeBerg)

The 4 wire cable connects to a small pcb, unlike the 6 axle diesels. That pcb is wired to the motor, and gets the power pickup from pressing against the metal wires in the top of the motor block:

 I don't think a lot of this connection to the power pickups, there is no spring contact to touch against the circuit board. It's wise to check your power pickup to each block when you get your GP40, you might only be picking up from a few "sides". A dab of grease in here will keep the connection better. Notice the metal "finger" on the bus wire, aligned with the axle? This is the metal strap that goes down inside the motor block to contact the gearbox. This is a potential source of problems. In the Aristo steamers, this connection is now soldered from the factory. If you solder this one though, you run the risk of interfering with the contact the circuit board makes. If you were careful, and made a nice smooth solder blob, it actually might help for 2 reasons, ensuring the metal clip is connected very well to the bus wire, and also providing a high point to better press against the circuit board.

The picture below is out of focus, but you can make out the part of the circuit board where the contact is made:

More on the motors:

Paul Norton, beloved "son" of Aristo even posted the problems he had on the Aristo site, and got replacement motors and they are slightly longer. This reinforces my "counterfeit motor" theory, and that Aristo was duped:  http://www.aristocraftforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=16598

"Well things did not go well. It turns out the new motor casings are 1/16 of an inch longer than the originals. The problem was solved by shaving the two small ridges off the back of the motor cavity in the first motor block. The motor now fit, but would rock sideways. The motor in the unmodified motor block was checked and it rocked, but not to the same degree. A couple of shims (0.030” thick, x .0.25” wide x 0.49” long) were glued to the front of the motor block cavity for the motor terminals to sit on."

The GP-40 reportedly uses a Mabuchi 545 motor with a fan, but other observations indicate the logo on the stock motors looks "funny".

Kadees:

Even though the Kadee site gives different recommendations, I suggest that you read Ted's vignette for installation, and a better solution in my opinion.

Wheel plating quality:

Many people have commented on the poor quality of the wheel plating. Since the underlying metal is steel, pitting and rust can be a big problem on track power and/or moist climates. Some reports have had the plating come off in as little as 5 hours. This is probably another problem with the "new" Sanda Kan factory.

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EMD E8 main page

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Overview

The Aristo E8 is a relatively new loco, the "date stamp" on the first run locos says 2006, but they became available around April 2007.

The CB&Q and Santa Fe ones came with chrome plating. As of late 2008, a second run of E8's with new road numbers are announced. Also the CB&Q and the Santa Fe are now in silver paint, not chrome plated.

There was a delay in receiving them them, we were told that the sideframes were "wavy" and not acceptable, and they were returned to China for new sideframes. The new sideframes are often bowed, so the original ones must have been pretty bad.

Cautions for the new owner:

• This is a long loco, be sure to give it space when moving it or working on it.
• Be careful when picking up from the top, you can damage the grill or punch in the porthole windows.
• There are "stirrups" and a step that are just below the locomotive doors in the center, these are particularly fragile, and can break off easily.

My best advice is to get your hand under the fuel tank to pick it up.

Fragile steps and stirrups:

Here's a picture of a broken off step near the tweezers, the stirrup is below the door. Good reason the heed my warning about how to pick up this loco, put your hand under the fuel tank!

Easily lost journal sideframe "thingies"

The truck sideframes "hangers" can also fall off easily, like the USAT F units. Perhaps a bit of silicon glue, so it can be taken off later. Ted Doskaris used CA glue, his were dislodged in the box.

Wavy sideframe castings:

Another aspect of the model, that held up distribution initially (the story is that all the first run were received in the US and were returned to China to be fixed) is the wavy sideframes of the trucks.

It's easiest to observe on the bottom of the following picture, notice the left hand journal area is "rotated" somewhat clockwiase, the middle one is bent out, and the right hand one is bent inwards and a bit counterclockwise.

I will try to get pictures of 2nd run E8.

Well, this one is pretty wavy and it was sold to Ted Doskaris:

Typical problems out of the box:

The only common problem is that the loco either does not run or does not run well. The motor blocks have contacts on the top that contact a small circuit board in the truck assembly. Quite often new locos do not have good contact here. The solution is to remove the motor blocks and bend the 8 tabs upwards. They will eventually recompress and this will occur again. It's not always obvious when the problem happens.

The contacts are for power pickup and for the motors. If the power pickup tabs are not making contact, then you will have poor running because you are only picking up from one truck.

If the motor contacts are not making contact, you will have worse problems, the motors will not be powered, and the other motor block will shove the "dead" one along the track, usually resulting in destroyed gears. Check my "Prime Mover Basics" page to learn about correcting this.

Another issue is that not all the drivers contact the rail even on flat track. As with virtually all "prime mover" motor blocks, there are various foam pads inside the motor block between the housing and one or more gearboxes, and sometimes the motors also. The idea under the motors is unclear, since normally the motors must be assembled completely "into" the motor block, in fact drive train binding will occur otherwise, and a common fix is to open the motor block, apply heavy pressure to the motor, and then reheat the motor brush tabs to allow the motor to sit all the way into the block. This is tricky since you really want to do both at the same time, but one by one, reheating each one alternatly will do it, but be careful to not melt stuff. (The original design was that these were not soldered, but free to seek "home", but this causes a different problem).

Also, foam pads under the gearboxes may overly limit flexibility, or cause one or more gearboxes to not seat properly in the "saddles" in the motor block, resulting in a "high centered" axle.

Finally, quite often the entire motor block casting is bowed such that nothing is flat. In this case grinding some of the saddles deeper can correct this, but of course, since there is no real up and down suspension in these motor blocks, you can never really overcome this design, the only thing really keeping the whole shebang from derailing is the deep flanges, normally on anything except flat track, one axle is in the air.

Disassembly:

Removal of fuel tank:

Note: you do not need to remove the fuel tank to take apart the loco. The fuel tank is secured with 4 screws, use a small philips screwdriver at an angle.The air tanks prohibit you from getting straight on the screws. Some people have pulled these tanks off, but mine were hot glued, and if there are pins to hold them on, they are very short. The picture below shows the angle a bit:

The picture below shows the tank off. The tank can only go back on one way, and there is a huge amount of room in it for weight. I the E8 weights are the same as the Aristo dash nine weights. Read the page on E8 weight for more info and some inexpensive ideas to add weight.

To remove the chassis, you firse need to release the front coupler. You can either remove it completely, or remove the 2 small screws holding the pilot housing.

Now you can remove 7 screws as shown in this picture below (where the yellow soda straws are):

Once you have it open, it looks like the picture below:

Notice the 2 small circuit boards on the chassis at each end. Each "battery" or "mu" cable for battery power connects to the board at the respective end of the chassis. One of the 2 leads goes through a polyswitch. This means that if you pass power "through" a loco, these will probably open electrically, since they are 3 amp rated. These should be bypassed in this kind of usage.

In the board near the nose of the loco, there are 2 more polyswitches. These are in line with each of the track pickups for the front truck ONLY. This is a nice feature to prevent meltdown, but the rear truck is unprotected, a strange omission. There are no polyswitches on the main board in the shell. See the picture below:

A suggestion to Aristo: put the polyswitches on the input to the main board first, protect the motors and other electronics. If you want to protect from shorts through the wheels under track power, then put polyswitches on ALL 4 track pickup leads. If you must put a polyswitch in the "mu" power bus, then rate it for 3 locos... that would be about 9 amps. That would protect from gross shorts.

The bottom line is that people running these locos in MU battery setups, or under heavy loads will likely get the famous "stops running and restarts after a while" situation.

All the lights are incandescent, and Aristo is using a series regulator IC to provide power, not the RFI emitting PIC processor that is the bane of R/C people (used in SD45 and others).

There are lights over each truck and shining from behind the step/stirrups for the front side doors, a nice touch, but check them, several people have reported them burning out prematurely, might be a candidate for LEDs here.

There is a simulated mars light, and it looks very convincing.

E8 "B" units

Aristo (Lewis Polk) said they will not make a B unit (and never did).

Rex Ammerman made an E8B unit for me (from TWO E8A's), here's a picture of his and mine at his house:

Rex's web site: http://www.trainweb.org/trainyard/index.html

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SD45

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Overview

The first SD45's seem to have been shipped to customers in June 2001.

In the Aristo forum, posted by Lewis Polk on 06-29-01, 7:19 am he stated:

"After 2 years of planning, engineering, mold making, r & d, promotion and heart and soul, the SD45 is here. Patented gears and smoke systems, DCC/RCC port, steel wheels, 24 ball bearing races and 100 pages or so of engineering drawings in 3d and it just pops out of the machine and into your hands."

This is also the first appearance of the new "prime mover" smoke unit.

My SD45

Normally I model an earlier era, the "transition" era. But Scott Polk wanted me to review new motor blocks, and gave me a NS Dash 9, although all I wanted was the motor blocks. I asked permission after my evaluation to give it to my friend Ted, but Scott was insistent I keep it. So, I decided I needed at least another modern locomotive to run with it. As the Dash 9 was a NS, I decided to buy one of the last batches of SD45's made, a high hood NS.

I've had it for some time, but never ran it. Recently I've built up my inventory of decoders and decided it's time to get the fleet all DCC'd.

So, silly me, not taking my own advice, plugged in a QSI and immediately greeted with erratic operation. Nothing made sense, so I traced the motor and track pickup wiring of the socket itself. Really weird results. Well, miswiring of the board that has the contacts for the motor block, classic swap of a track pickup and motor lead. Works on DC because they are shorted together. There were even more wiring errors. See the SD45 wiring errors page.

OK, so got it somewhat running, and the locomotive derails on my level inner loop. Ahh, axles new, don't slide side to side, inner loop is 10' diameter. Heavy gear oil (Hob-E-Lube) on the axles. OK better.

Now what? Some more derailments and I decide to follow up on the weight situation, I know more weight helps, and I had a set of the real lead weights. Put all 3 in, adding 4 pounds, yes tracks better but still a derailment.

I suspected this from the beginning, bad back to back. I had a wide radius switch with the shim on the guard rail, and the narrow back to back was making the axle jump up as it goes through. Wheels out of gauge! Since these are "D cut" wheels, you can adjust them. Too wide, grind off the tip of the axle, too narrow, add a washer between the axle end and the wheel.

I eventually swapped out the trucks for a couple that had the short-lived Aristo SS wheels since one of the motors burned out. I may go back to the "D cut" trucks later. Before I do that, I will measure the flange thickness and cut that down if too thick, and then set the back to back (and then the gauge will automatically be right).

Appearance

Here are some pictures from Ted Doskaris.

The picture below shows the SD45 with the side and end railings attached (you have to attach them yourself):

The picture below shows it pulling a train long hood forward. This photo was taken in the dark to purposely show the operation of the classification lights. Note the reflection of the two illuminated red classification lights on the reefer car bulkhead coupled to the nose of this loco.

The long hood head light is illuminated in this operational condition but, the classification lights on either side of it are actually not illuminated even though they appear to be - apparently due to their clear lenses scattering the head light flux from within the shell of the loco.

The same loco decoupled from the train is also shown in the dark with long hood forward operation. The photo of this shows the illumined red classification lights as the loco's nose is pulling away from view.

The following picture is of he same loco view as above but shown with under house lights on: (Note the angle at which the red illuminated classifications lights are observed at is significant as far as noticing the intensity of the red illumination. In fact, if viewed from an extreme angle, the emitted light may appear to be white or off.)

The following is the same loco view, but now with short hood forward operation with the picture taken in the dark: (Note the head light is illuminated and the classification lights are not illuminated as they ppear dark.)

The following is the same loco view with short hood forward operation but with picture taken with under house lights on: (Note the head light
is illuminated and the classification lights are not illuminated as they appear clear.)

Comment from Ted: "unlike what I had previously thought about the illuminating lights showing through the painted plastic ends of a loco - the above pictures
do not indicate this condition. The reflecting classification lights on trailing loco's end seems to make it appear that light is being seen through the painted finish.

Inside the SD45

The SD 45 has 10 screws holding the hoods and cab to the chassis, they are self tapping screws 2.57 mm over the threads and 7.8mm thread length. On the chassis, these 10 holes are  clearly marked with arrows except for 2 that are under the cab, near the edge of the chassis.

In the picture below, you see the whole unit disassembled. You can see the main board up in the center of the shell, the smoke unit to the left and the speaker to the right.

The chassis consists of a piece of "C" shaped channel, most likely for strength. This is probably the reason the main board is at top, along with the fact that the slide switches can be on the same board, saving the cost of a separate switch board.

In the picture below is shown the nose / short hood from the inside, (remember that this is with the shell upside down)You can see an incandescent bulb for the porch light at the top, and two classification lights below (waiting on Ted to tell me what these are)

In the picture below you see the "long end" of the loco. The porch light is just out of the picture at the top with the red and white wires.

The single bulb hanging in the air is to illuminate the number boards below. Many people have changed to 2 leds one directly behind each number board. Better lighting and the incandescent bulb often "bled through" the actual shell.

At the very bottom of the picture you can also see on edge of the speaker.

So this wiring leads to the main board, attached to the underside of the top of the shell.

The picture below shows the contacts of the 4 switches (in the center, 6"solder blobs" each.

To the left of these is the shorting plug, long and thin, you can just make out "PCB02". This basically connects the track pickups to the motor and also connects track power to the smoke unit and lights. At the top you can see "J1" on the main board. The "other half" of the Aristo socket is the black socket to the right. This connector usually has no circuits connected to it. The words DCC J2 are partially obscured at the top right.

The wires for the lighting are hard wired to the the right hand side, and the wires for the motors and pickups are soldered to the left.

At the top left are the power leads to the smoke unit.

The only weird thing (my opinion) is the small daughter board soldered at right angles to the main board at extreme left.

What the heck is it?

The picture below is a better view of the "right side" of this board. It shows some filter caps, a small transistor, a larger transistor, and an inductor (yellow).

You can also see the J1 and J2 silkscreen identifiers more clearly.

But back to this daughter board, the only clue is the "OUT" by the power transistor.

So wha's on the other side? Ah hah! The famous Aristo PIC processor, used, as in the smoke unit, a voltage regulator.

This is commonly used by Aristo. Apparently using the pic and PWM to the lights is cheaper than a 3 terminal regulator and heat sink. Unfortunately, many R/C manufacturers will swear that the electrical "hash" caused by the rapid switching on and off of the power transistor creates RFI, and the SD45 is famous because the board is up in the top of the loco where they want to put the antenna. "Another fine mess you've gotten me into". 

Subsequent locomotives indeed use a 3 terminal regulator, screwed to the middle of the 3 mounting holes that hold weights.

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PCC Trolley Car

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History

Aristo has a PCC car in 1:29 coming out in 2008. The first shots below are from the 2008 BTS. 

Update, now it's late 2009, they supposedly went back to  add a socket, bs.

Update, it's January 2010, promised this year again.

Update, it arrived January 2011.

The picture below shows a pre-production model in 2010

Th picture below shows the frame, a frame with the power trucks, and the shell in the background. The trucks are very compact and there is nothing sticking up above them. Lewis commented they might be good for scratchbuilding. Note that a year or two before, some other company displayed the shells.

Here I'm holding the chassis. It's about 3.5 to 4 pounds, nice sharp zinc casting. Already has a hole, just not sized for the Aristo socket.

Here's a picture of the interior

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Overview of the actual model:

It weighs 4 pounds, 4 oz, and is 19- 1/4" long

Pros:

The model looks really nice.

It scales well with the prototype.

The paint job is great as usual for Aristo.

Cons:

As delivered many PCC cars had wheel wobble, some more severe than others.

Wheel flanges are too thick.

Wheelsets severely out of gauge.

There are also reports of irregular running. (a combination of the wheel wobble, and more importantly, severely out of gauge wheelsets. More later.

The Aristo socket has been modified to violate Aristo's own specifications of clearance and socket type, thus aftermarket decoders will not fit.

The lighting is too bright and uses blue white LEDs (unrealistic and harsh).

The doors do not align well and are often not closed well.

Doors:

The doors are moveable, and are in an assembly that comes out with a single screw:

The doors have a very funky arrangement of springs that hold them closed, well sort of. The springs should be replaced with at least something that leaves them fully closed, or better yet, allows opening.

By playing a bit with the springs, you can sometimes make the doors work better, but be careful, I'm sure there are no spare parts. One of the problems should be immediately obvious, by not having "left hand" and "right hand"
 springs, and from the locations of the screws, you can see how inconsistent the geometry is. In the picture above, notice the outer two springs, the screws are at different heights, and look at the difference between how the springs sit. In fact some springs are glued to the door, and others have the end in a small hole.  No two alike! Whoever designed this part must be crosseyed.

Besides not really tensioning the doors well, and allowing motion, the springs cause a further problem see below:

Notice the misalignment of the doors, not only the stripe, but how the top of the door hits the door frame. These doors cannot open because they hit the frame, the springs on these doors are providing excess upward pressure.

I have an idea to make operating doors, so maybe the springs can be done away with entirely. More to come.

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