Cheap diesel, soup it up??

If you wire the motors in series, the E-unit should be fine.

Electric RR Co makes the Railsounds Commander for $89, and the Alco FA version should give you the sound you want.

It’s from the 2004 Glacier Route ready to run set 6-31952

My first o gauge train

Would this truck work if I swapped the side frames?

I believe those trucks have an odd way of mounting the sideframes. I'd suggest finding one with ALCO sidframes.

And don't forget to get the correct Fuel tank with the Speaker mount. IF not the plastic Lionel part, then a die cast Weaver models or MTH should fit in between the trucks as well!

That truck will not work   The RS3 had the motors inside the truck  Little can motors.  The truck in the pic is for a Pullmor type motor

Steaming Jon posted:

Would this truck work if I swapped the side frames?

bluelinec4 posted:

That truck will not work   The RS3 had the motors inside the truck  Little can motors.  The truck in the pic is for a Pullmor type motor

That truck should work, it is the motor-in-truck design. The side frames, steps, & coupler mounting are all one part and will have to be switched out with your dummy truck parts to match the powered truck.

You can see how these are assembled by disassembling your power truck down to the power block(it may be just 2 screws - going by memory) and confirming that your dummy truck components match up and fit the power block.

I added a second motor to an RS-3 recently. The engine was not a good puller with a single motor. I wired the second one in series with the first and it works fine.

I like these low-end Lionel RS-3's more than I should; while they will run at the speed of light, strangely they are also capable of running at reasonable, if not creep-y, speeds. Good body tooling; the frame could use some - a lot - of sprucing up. I prefer the ones with the metal handrails, though.

I have painted 2 of these in the past; one day I am going to fix those pilots and close that horrible gap. And the fuel tanks.

One of my favorite things about this design are the little "traction motors" in the trucks; plenty powerful in tandem, they are much more prototypical in design arrangement than either the vertical can motors or the fancy-schmancy single motor/driveshaft schemes. They are truck-mounted traction motors, like the real thing. Pretty much.

ERR command control would be an easy upgrade, too. Some weight is definitely a requirement.

I have an RS4-D that I was going to do the same exact thing to. Certainly was an anemic puller with its single motor. I have a "donor" loco with the same motor/truck configuration to use for the conversion. My only concern is if there is enough clearance under the long hood for the motor to fit.

Here is a pic of the engine...

Thanks for all the replies!

I do plan on adding the second motor for sure, but the finance department said no to the truck listed on eBay until Friday, and the listing ends tonight... oh well, maybe one will come up with Alco sideframes...

Not sure if I will add the sound, but if I do I'll use the ERR commander, that looks like a good deal...

For now I'm just going to see if I can figure out how to get rid of the wobble this thing has... There's a lot of rocking motion allowed in both trucks, and I think if I add some bolsters to one truck it will shore it up while still allowing the engine to work ok on less than perfect track. That's always worked for me in HO scale anyway... 

Steaming Jon posted:

...I do plan on adding the second motor for sure, but the finance department said no to the truck listed on eBay until Friday, and the listing ends tonight... oh well, maybe one will come up with Alco sideframes...

Oddly enough, you may be better off on bidding on another GN RS-3 for the motor truck and parting it out. Lionel made a large number of these in that starter set.

For gosh sakes lower the fuel tank, unless you plan on taking that thing off-road!  (Insert a biscuit of wood painted to match between the frame & the fuel tank.  Add a little lead in the tank while you're at it.)

Mark, another motor should fit inside the long hood of your RSD-4.  The only issue I can think of, is that if the truck doesn't pivot centered on the motor, then it might hit the inside of the shell.

I have that exact same engine. It couldn't pull more than a couple cars and the horn sounded like a sick goat.
I'm following this thread with interest- 

Would love to do something with this otherwise useless engine.

I will definitely post pics of the truck swap, and if I do the sound install I'll post that too...

Ok, so I decided to do some exploratory surgery on the engine. This will be a straightforward swap. The trucks come apart very easily, and the only difference I see in the sideframes is cosmetic. The only difference I see between the powered and unpowered trucks is that the unpowered one is missing a motor, a few gears, and pickup rollers. The axles even have gears on the back of the wheels (but no grooves for traction tires). That means all you really need to convert this one to a two motor diesel is a motor, gears, and a few scraps of wire (and axles with traction tires and pickup rollers if you want them).

I also added some bolsters to the powered truck while I had it apart... took a bit of trial and error to get the right height, I made them too thin at first and had to add some shims, but the engine tracks well and doesn't wobble at all anymore!

I've also discovered that the listing for the truck on eBay didn't expire last night, it was on sale and the sale price ended, so it's still listed, but at the regular price... it's the only one out there right now, so I may end up buying it Friday...

Here's a question... how much weight should I add?

I wouldn't go overboard, as the bearing surfaces are plastic.  4 to 6 ounces, maybe 8 oz max but I doubt you can fit that much.  Since both trucks will be powered, all the weight is now on driven axles- your pulling power will automatically double.

Honestly it seems to pull ok for me with the single powered truck... maybe I'll just see how it runs with two powered trucks before I add any weight... I was just going off of other's recommendations...

These locos ride pretty high.  Depending on the quality of the wheels and tires, they tend to wobble and that motion is exaggerated by the loose connection between the body and the trucks.  Adding a little weight in the center of the fuel tank acts as ballast and tames the rocking motion, giving the appearance of more solid, smoother operation.

The wobbles are fixed on this one, I added some bolsters to one truck to take up the sideways rocking of the truck. It will still rock forward and backward, so it follows the track, but doesn't rock side to side. This arrangement fixes the body wobble, and still allows flexibility for less than perfect track...

The bolsters are just plastic scraps from a model kit that I glued to the truck in line with the mounting pin. The trick is to make them thick enough to take up the slack, but not so thick that the truck binds...

As is it will pull 6 scale/close to scale cars on level track no problem, and that will only improve with another motor, so maybe I won't need any additional weight...

It should improve A LOT with a second motor!

A few thoughts: First even on evil bay things are negotiable; become knowledgeable about what something should sell for if it's priced too high and politely make a fair offer even without "best offer" noted; become aware of actual shipping costs and again negotiate. don't know what the seller is asking but that item can be sent anywhere in the U.S. for less than $7.

Now for some thing else. If you get it let me know. I might have a pair of ALCO style side frames hidden away somewhere that i'll give you for the cost of postage. I'll check my stuff in the Toronto half of the next inning.

Sorry - only one plastic ALCO sideframe if you need it it's yours, - send me your address. Email is in my profile.

Thanks for the offer, but I shouldn't have any problem swapping my side frame over...

Bought the truck just now, it went back on sale... it may still have been a little high, but I'm ok with that... especially since I bought this engine in a lot (picture above) with a g-scale boxcar, 4 of the super lightweight plastic Lionel cars, and a decent PW Sunoco tank car all for $25...

Part should be here Friday! I'll post a "how to" here when I do the swap...

I also won a GN caboose to go with the engine!

Well, my truck arrived today, but it's missing some important parts... they sent me an unpowered truck... I'm hoping it was an honest mistake and they will take care of it. If not, it's a clear snad, the listing clearly shows a powered truck, so worst case I'll get my money back...

Well, the saga continues... I got the powered truck in the mail today, got it installed, and did a quick test run with the shell off, it ran great. Put the shell back on and ran it again and it was not happy at all: noisy, struggling to move, and went right from forward to reverse with no neutral in between... pulled the shell back off and found some pinched wires, separated them and now it goes neutral-neutral-reverse-neutral-neutral-neutral-reverse...

I guess it's telling me it wants the ERR sound system...

I want to run this engine. I don't have the money for new electronics right now... solution? Scavenge the diodes and a cap off the burned out board and make my own rectifier. Only goes forward, but it runs!

Only thing is it's way faster, even with the two motors wired in series... not sure what I'm gonna do about that... probably just run it until I can get the new guts...

So, with ERR gone, is there any other way to get sound in this thing? Do I really need sound? I think I could be satisfied with just a horn (which still works, but can't really be heard over the noise levels at the train club... speaker upgrade?)

As for the motor upgrade, I ended up switching the guts of the powered truck into the frame of the dummy truck because my engine has metal bearings for the axles and the truck I bought didn't. I did swap the wheels with traction tires over, so both trucks have tires... it runs well on my homemade bridge rectifier, but it would be nice to have a reverse unit...

Hello Steam Jon. If you still need a reverse unit and funds are tight, I can offer a couple of options. First of all, I believe your RS-3 uses a 600-0103-001 Electric E-Unit, as shown in here. Go to Supplement 27 and open it to pgs 1-5 thru 1-6. I believe that's your loco. If so, Lionel still sells that E-Unit for $16.50+shpg, and if you're super-patient, you could wait until November and hope they have their 50% off parts sale again.

Option number 2 is that your old (presumably fried) e-unit should be easily repairable - email me for further discussion, my email is in my profile.

Guys I’ve found this thread to be very interesting, and I don’t mean to hijack it, but my question will lead in a lightly different direction. I have half dozen or so MPC and modern Geep pairs. I can run them in tandem by either setting the e-units to not cycle, or getting them synced and hoping one of them doesn’t trip it’s e-unit. My thought is the prototypical wired connection between the two units, somehow bypassing one unit when operated together but a quick connect to the bypassed e unit to run them separately. Mostly I’d just leave them together, just as I do my F units. Your thoughts and observations are much appreciated

dick

You can MU up to 4 AC motors on 1 regular electromechanical E-unit using 22 gauge 2 or 3 position quick-connects. A DPST switch hidden discretely on each individual loco can allow you to switch between MU & the internal/native E-unit.

ERR was still on the table when I fried the e-unit, so I stole the diodes and a capacitor off the board to make the bridge rectifier... I could probably re-install the diodes and cap on the board and replace the burned out part, but that's a lot of messing around to fix a $20 part.

So I did some digging on Lionel's parts search, looks like the 600-0103-001 is discontinued, but gave an alternate number of 610-0107-100. That number is also unavailable, but is listed as an alternate for number 610-0103-100 as well, and that one is available, so I think that one should maybe work??

They also show a 610-8719-103 that is described as "e-unit w/o bracket modified (slow)"... not sure what that's all about...

The 610-0103-100 should work well in your engine. It appears from Lionel's photo that it may come with no wires attached - I ordered and used three of these last November, and all came with wiring, so ... it sounds like you have the soldering skills, I assume changing out a bit of wiring won't be an issue for you.

Yeah, soldering a few wires to a circuit board is no problem... I think I'll go that route, then all I have to find is a solution for the weak horn...