# Piko 0-6-0T/set questions



## Jscola30 (Jun 13, 2012)

Hi all, I'm sort of new here, wonder if anyone has any of the Piko 0-6-0Ts from the starter sets? I remember the initial GR review being lukewarm and I did a search and came across on old post here. One of the issues they brought up that I would be concerned about is the paint coming off of the drivers on worn track. Does this really happen? Has it been corrected? If it does come off, is it that big of a problem? Thanks,

Joe


----------



## lownote (Jan 3, 2008)

No, you WANT the paint to come off the drivers. Painted drivers means bad power pickup. Most people removed the paint from the drivers. 

I had two of these, and was disappointed. It was a nice sturdy looking loco that I thought could stand up to handling by kids. But the two I had both tended to slip their gears and get "out of quarter," which means the drive rods would come off. I just could not get either one to run reliably. That was 2-3 years ago, in the first run of the 0-6-0.

As I understand it, Piko's newest engines are much improved. I dont know if they upgraded the 0-6-0 or not.


----------



## vsmith (Jan 2, 2008)

Yes the painted drivers were a stupid shortcut on Pikos part to get a xmas tree set out to market, if your layout does not have any turnouts at all you dont need to worry about paint removal, it when you have turnouts that relying only on the slider pickups it will stall on every single turnout. Take the paint off the drivers and performance gets 100% better over turnouts and oxdation on the track. 

I have had OK luck with mine but I dont tax it beyond 3-4 cars max nor do I have any kids to run it at 200mph, low and very slow for me. If you dont thrash them they seam to be fine, if they do go bad at least the replacement drive brick are reasonable $. they are great bash platforms as they are cheap so its worth getting just so you can try bashing.


----------



## Jscola30 (Jun 13, 2012)

Thank you this is VERY helpful. My current layout actually doesn't have any turnouts and I keep consists very light (depending on the size of the engine, 2-3 mid size cars, maybe a few more if the cars are like the LGB field RR cars and the engine's big enough), however, if I did want to remove the paint from the drivers, what should I use to do that?


----------



## vsmith (Jan 2, 2008)

I used alligator clips to connect the skates to the powerpack, run the engine at about 2/3 power and used fine finish sandpaper 220 grit to wear the paint off. I suppose you could also use a paint remover on q-tips while the wheels are turning. I only took off enough paint so it would run OK and let the rest just wear off.


----------

