My #346 is sstill here. Had not heard of any recall at all. In fact, I had not run it until this weekend. Here is my experience:
Arrived at Ernie Noa's Saturday AM. Had heard about all the problems and was working towards getting it to run on air for a test, but had not succeeded. So when I got there, Ernie kindly helped me with his setup. by the way, for those who are interested, the boiler filler is M-10 sith a 1.00 pitch. (I have a hardware store with bins of screws and just kept trying until I found one that worked.) It seemed to run OK, did not move when the johnson bar was in neutral.
So we filled the boiler and gas tank, fired it up and started it running. The first couple of laps it seemed to run fine. Then the loco developed a definite lope and there was the sound of metal hitting metal!! Not good.
At this point Larry Hergert (AIA Old Fart) and Jim Sanders(?) and I started playing with the engines. At first we thought it was the left side, but after much poking and prying we discovered it was the right side. The front connecting rod was bottoming out on the crosshead support Larry got out a file and started working on the connecting rod. Then a little work with a dremel on the bottom of the support and it seemed to be able to move properly. Time to fire her up and try again.
This time the engine showed definite problems with the timing. However, the johnson bar was not all the way forward. It is directly behind the pressure gauge and difficult to see or feel that it is in the proper place. Also the loco shows the typical Accucraft symptoms of working better in reverse than in forward. A little fiddling with the johnson bar and it seemed to work.
Sunday I put two Accuraft stock cars and a shorty caboose (which I had bent the contacts away from the wheels since I wasn't running it on track power) behind it and tried to run it. As with most portable layouts, Ernie's is not totally level. The engine would slip on the portion where there was an up grade. Closer inspection showed the blind drivers were not contating the rail.
So now I have mine back home and some things to figure out ( I like it). Need to figure out if the timing is off and also need to work on the suspension. On the side need to do some more refining on the front right side connecting bar problem.