A recent pick from Yahoo's HO YARD SALE forum, it was found to have bent rods on one side, explaining why the original owner couldn't get it running, and its exceptional price tag...
Compare this to their 0-4-0 Shifter and their 0-6-0 Big Six and it's easy to see that Mantua got a lot of miles out of one boiler casting.
Once I straightened the rods out, it ran fine but was found to have an arcing issue between the tender sideframes and the steel axles of the wheelsets. It would generate enough heat to make the sideframes too hot to touch, very disconcerting... Consulting other owners I soon found that it was a rather common problem with older Mantuas, and that the fixes were as numerous as the owners.
The one I settled on is a variation of one offered by a friend, that is, use the truck wipers off of a TYCO searchlight car and mount them to the trucks on the tender. Since both of my searchlight cars are mint examples, I opted for modifying a pair of wipers found in my scrap box...
It works quite well, the arcing is gone as well as the alarming heat and now I have yet another nice running old school steam model from yesteryear.
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