AZL Brass GS-3 Repairs.

Continuing my inspection I found that one of the wheel wipers at the rear set of drivers was bent sticking up above the wheel flange and not making contact with the wheel at all,


The one on the other side was also bent slightly out of place and had some of fuzz caught up between the wiper and the wheel flange.

After removing the front and rear bogies along with the gear cover plate it was easy to see that the one wiper was completely bent out of place and not making contact with the wheel at all.



Well the next step is clear I will have to remove the drivers so i can clean and try to bend the wheel wipers back into their proper positions. But That's tomorrows job I'm done for tonight.

David

I'm next!

Since I MAY have been one of the "few others" you mentioned...

Any burned wires?

Picking up where I left off yesterday.
I Remove and cleaned all of the loco's wheels and gears. 

To access the wheel wipers which are mounted to the top of the chassis with a screw, the boiler body must be removed. The Boiler is held on with 3 screws. One under the front Pilot truck and 2 screws located just under the back of the cab which can not be accessed with out first removing the tender. Removing the drawbar screw from the loco will allow you to shift the tender to the side just enough to access the screws holding the boiler on. Once the Boiler was off and out of the way I also took the tender body off (4 screws on the bottom one in each corner) so I could inspect the wiring.

As expected I found a few wiring issues in the tender
circled in yellow the wire has broken free from the ring terminal at the bolster 
circled in orange wire is barely stuck to the side of the solder tab.
circled in green only 1 strand of the wire is still connected to the soldered pad
circled in red a melted piece of insulation hanging off the wire and the heat shrink tubing isn't even covering the bare wire. 
Note:  This is not the first time that i have seen the insulation melted off the wires on one of these.

 


The solder used on these connections appears to have a very low melting point.  Its my guess that something shorted out causing the wires to get hot enough to melt the insulation and soften the solder to the point that the wires started coming loose.

After I repositioned the heat shrink tubing and trimmed the wire ends i soldered them back in place.  
And With the boiler out of the way i was able to remove the wheel wiper assembly and bend them back into place.

Re-checking the wiring for shorts, Re assembly and re-quartering the drivers is a job for next weekend 

David