How To Turn Sound Off???

Use the sound pot on the bottom of the tender or the engine, assuming that whoever did the conversion had one installed.

Barry,

After I posted I remembered that during installation I jumpered it out (as per the instructions) because I thought I'd never run them conventional again.

So about the only of thing to do is to hook DCS to the test track?

Yep.  I left out  the vol pot on a couple of upgrades as well. Full volume in conventional mode.

I guess I could cut one of the wires and put a wire nut (or on/off switch) on it, take it off ONLY when I want to put the engine on the test track (main reason for putting on test track right now is to check the drive train).

Bob,

So about the only of thing to do is to hook DCS to the test track?

Don't you have a DCS Remote Commander? If you do a factory reset and then hook that up, the engine will be silent upon power-on and you can turn its volume down after start up

Barry...You're the STUFF!  Thanks for that reminder

As the guy on the tank restoration program would say...Easy Peazy Lemon Squeazy

The William J is got a rumble to it I need to get out, not sure if it's in the drive train, just the motor, or something rubbing on the boiler shell.  The test track will help me pin it down.  Bob2 says it's the flywheel, hope to find out soon.

An alternative is to open the tender and either (1) install a pot or (2) install a pair of resistors to bring the volume down. I don't recall if the pot is 5 k or 10 k.  Use resistors of half that value, and place one between center wire and end wires.

If you don't want to drill a hole in tender floor (speaker will attract the shavings), just set the pot to the desired volume and wrap in electrical tape.

I reset the engine and hooked up the DCS RC.  I can definitely see the flywheel has a slight wobble at low speed, not as noticeable at high speed but that's when the vibration kicks in and of course the wobble wouldn't be seen as fast as it spins.  I believe that's a new flywheel I got from NWSL.  I have another so I'll try swapping them out.

I may put my gauge on it to see how much out the flywheel is.

Bob, it's not very easy to replace a flywheel and get it perfect.  Seems like it should be, but isn't.  It could very well be that the shaft is bent.  You say it's a new flywheel, so it may be that it was not pressed on properly, and the shaft got bent in the process.  Only cure would be to replace the motor.

Or, take a magic marker.  Hold it slightly away from the top of the flywheel, near the edge, and rotate the flywheel slowly so that the marker place a mark on the high spot.  Press down gently at that point, and up on the other side, and see what happens.  Clean off the mark and retry.  Another alternative, is to leave it and say it's a prototype rumble.

The "rumble" is not too bad, but I know it's there.  I can't recall if the other flywheel has the same diameter shaft hole or if I have to drill it out.  The shaft is approx .125".

It's such a pita to do, but while I'm waiting for parts to fix my other 2 projects I might as well get busy on this.

The flywheel on it now was a slip-fit and held in place with a setscrew.  Bob2 said that may be the problem, the setscrew and hole throwing the balance off.  I know I need to get some reamers if I'm going to keep doing this.

The wobble is very minute and it could be the tach tape is what I'm seeing get wobbly.

Sounds crude but hold a file (loosely) to it while running. It will fix itself!

Hey, what can I tell you? I don't have a lathe.

Joe, I have a mini-lathe (if I can get thru all the clutter to it), but is it the faces that need smoothing or is it the outside diameter?  The faces are more likely.  1st thing is I need to dig out my tach tape calculations so I can recall which one I made/used.

If you drilled out the flywheel and did not have a drill press, the odds of drilling true are pretty low.  If there's a set screw, I'd loosen the screw and then try the marker technique I described above.  I would be disinclined to try turning it in a lather.

I agree what the other guy said, I'll bet the shaft is bent on the end where the flywheel goes! If you keep running it that way your bearing will go bad!

I would at least try straightening it first if not replace the motor i doubt you can't buy just the armature assembly!

Alan

I took a close look at everything and what I think is wobble is really the edge of the paper tach tape.  I took a sharp Xacto blade and trimmed the edges down and it appears to look better now.

I don't recall (would have to take the tach tape off to determine) but I don't think I had to put a setscrew in the flywheel, it's just a press fit.  I have another flywheel (bought 2) and it doesn't have a setscrew.

I need to look at the boiler shell to make sure it's not causing the sound I'm hearing.  I have a thin sheet of sticky-backed craft foam inside the boiler where the drive is to help quiet the noise.  I don't see any marks on the foam that would indicate something rubbing on it but there may be something else I'm missing.

At top speed there's some vibration felt on the motor, but I think it's normal and not the problem.  I do have 2 rubber traction tires missing on the same side so maybe that could be causing at least some of the noise.

I'm going to put the boiler back on tomorrow and see if the sound increases and try to locate 2 tires to put on.

I got rid of some of the unwanted noise by putting the other 2 traction tires on the engine (duh!) plus I placed some cloth tape between the 2 spots where the boiler and chassis get screwed together, this seemed to help transferring a bit of the vibration.

I re-added the engine to the DCS list and ran it around the layout for 15 minutes and all seems well, better than before I feel, although not completely free of the hum.

I'll just have to remember to do a factory reset on any engine before I place it on the test stand.

Thanks again Barry!