LEGACY Conversion, Scale Lionel Class A!!!! (11/18)

Looking forward to your progress on this, should be a great conversion!  I can see right away that the speakers have to go!

gunrunnerjohn posted:

Looking forward to your progress on this, should be a great conversion!  I can see right away that the speakers have to go!

Yep! Time to upgrade! 

Hey Bruk, in the picture of the engine, there is a small black plug, with male pins inside it, sticking up just above the DCDR. By chance could you tell me where the end of the red wire connects to? I've been converting mine to a cruise M, and just as I was wrapping up, I notice this red wire is loose and I cant tell where it should go to. I believe its for the headlamp?

Will it have the sound set from the most recent Legacy Lionmaster Class A? The sounds on that were EXACT.

Bruk posted:

FWI Lionel most likely will not reproduce the Class A. They would have to start from scratch, create new tooling and we all know how often Lionel does that...

What about Lionel's scale Class A tooling that was made in Korea?

Phoenixx101 posted:

Hey Bruk, in the picture of the engine, there is a small black plug, with male pins inside it, sticking up just above the DCDR.

Its for the Classification lights. It has a resistor in line.

Keith L posted:

Bruk posted:

FWI Lionel most likely will not reproduce the Class A. They would have to start from scratch, create new tooling and we all know how often Lionel does that...

What about Lionel's scale Class A tooling that was made in Korea?

It was stolen from MTH I believe. Look at how similar the Protosound 1 version compared to this model. 

TrainMan1225 posted:

Will it have the sound set from the most recent Legacy Lionmaster Class A? The sounds on that were EXACT.

Yes. 

The Scale N&W Class A, Pennsylvania RR T-1 and New York Central Dreyfus Hudson were the 3 engines at the center of the lawsuit from the documents I have read. While I would never say never, it certainly is unlikely to see  those 3 rereleased.

Like you Bruk, I had my TMCC Class A gutted and converted to Legacy using the lionmaster A components and it’s very much worth it.

What a Beautiful locomotive now - especially with that perfect hooter whistle. 

These are the types of projects that interests me the most. Very cool to see this happen. Hopefully I can find a way to put the legacy prr t1 sounds into my scale t1 that was made only with tmcc. 

And Bruk - The shay still runs great! Thanks for a great job. SInce you could fix my problemed shay you can do this install (t1 one someday to? ! 

@Bruk I'm curious, what was your donor engine for the T&P 610?  Or did you just buy the motor and boards from Lionel service?  In order for the speed steps to match "factory" Legacy locos, the inches traveled per revolution (i.e., driver size divided by gear ratio) have to be close.

Got all the unneeded boards and wire stripped from the loco. I like to reuse some of the wiring/plugs at times so ill keep it close. I also got the motor reworked mounted with a new flywheel and encoder. I had to shorten/grind down the shaft common to the worm gear so I could fit the dog bone properly mounted the RCMC mount to the drive block. Ill be doing the front drive and reworking the headlight/harness. When I do these kind of conversions on older models I always disassemble the drive/entire motor. Then clean I and reapply fresh lubricant to the needed areas. 

Ted S posted:

@Bruk I'm curious, what was your donor engine for the T&P 610?  Or did you just buy the motor and boards from Lionel service?  In order for the speed steps to match "factory" Legacy locos, the inches traveled per revolution (i.e., driver size divided by gear ratio) have to be close.

The T&P project used Lionels BEMC board not RCMC. BEMC uses back EMF instead of an flywheel encoder and uses a Hall Effect Sensor/Magnet for chuff... If you go back into that thread and the wiring diagrams I have created that are on this forum I talk about how they function.

The only time I have stripped another Loco for harvesting was an early Legacy Lionmaster 3985 Challenger and I threw the parts into the Scale JLC 3985 Challenger. 

Typical Gear ratio that I have seen from Lionel is 16 revs of the motors flywheel is 1 rotation of the drivers so (16:1) 

M J Breen posted:

The Scale N&W Class A, Pennsylvania RR T-1 and New York Central Dreyfus Hudson were the 3 engines at the center of the lawsuit from the documents I have read. While I would never say never, it certainly is unlikely to see  those 3 rereleased.

Hmm, I guess that really explains a lot. I would use one of my quotes, "AHA!", which is loud and drawn out. Well, I'm also one who will be optimistic. I know that if I talk about these 3 engines a lot when around some of the folk at Lionel, that maybe it will start a ball slowly rolling and we'll see these down the road(3 years or so). I would imagine that they will have to get around to them because they can't keep them off the drawing board for too awful long.

@Bruk, what you're doing is darn cool, I know I couldn't do it even if someone else was operating my hands. Can't wait to see more.

Wednesday night in the 3 hours I had. I reworked the front drive. The roller bearings common to the drive/worm gear were really rough and tight felt worn out, one of the bearing cover actually popped off, I removed them and cleaned them out with some IPA, repacked them and tapped the covers back on and good as new!

After that I started work on the headlight, I originally inserted one 3528 LED in there and I wasn’t pleased with how the number boards looked. I ended up adding separate LEDs for the LH/RH side then separated the power from the headlight. So they lite up via track power and the headlight will come on via RCMC function similar to the AC9.

With the headlight I decided to try a Dual Sealed Beam look. I took two 0603 LEDs separated them on a small PCB and then glued it in place. I filled in the cracks in the housing then painted it silver. The headlight Lens had to be cut/filed down so it could fit in the housing. Got it mounted back on the pilot and reworked the wiring/harness between the loco and drive.

I love the headlight treatment, I'm impressed you get four LED's in there, I'd like to see that a little closer!

This is going to be a very deluxe job!  I know that Lionel somehow fits multiple LED's into these lamp holders for Vision Line stuff, but they have the money for custom molds and the like.

gunrunnerjohn posted:

I love the headlight treatment, I'm impressed you get four LED's in there, I'd like to see that a little closer!

This is going to be a very deluxe job!  I know that Lionel somehow fits multiple LED's into these lamp holders for Vision Line stuff, but they have the money for custom molds and the like.

I dont think i could show you again at this time. Id have to destroy it!  

Lionel uses a small PCB with three wires connected to it. On that PCB is three 0603 or Right Angle LEDs. They are grounded together but side facing and forward facing LEDs are separately powered. 

I don't know if you have another step planned for the headlight reflector but if not consider painting it with Molotow Chrome. On a smooth surface it will appear brite polished chrome or silver vs dull silver paint.

Pete

I got a lot done in 6 hours Friday after work, I got 80% of the harness for the locomotive made up. I still got to make a plug for the antenna wire that goes between the shell and RCMC board. I also need to make and install the new cab lights instead of the original single light bulb.

When I start with a conversion in any scale I always start with the motor and power pick up.  I then work my way “up” the chassis. I also try and follow the NMRA standard for wire color common to those outputs. But since this is all Lionel parts and Lionel uses all grey wire now I’m not going to be to broken up about the proper wire color.

So I started with the power and motor wires. I trimmed and crimped new plug inserts for the board. Then I made a harness for the flywheel encoder. I flipped the plug on the encoder board for a cleaner install. I reused the original IR/wires since it isn’t a 3 wire. I also reused the Prg/Run switch and the Smoke On/Off switch. Usually on a Lionel factory engine there are multiple On/Off switches for the smoke units. I haven’t decided yet if I want to go through the trouble of adding another switch for the whistle steam effect. Ill probably just tie both into the one switch.

I accidentally damaged the female plug on the firebox flicker board with the soldering iron and didn’t have a replacement so I just soldered the wire directly to that board. After that I created the harness for the connection with the headlight and center roller pick up on the front drive. I also made a small harness from the RCMC to the front marker lights. I reused the clear twist wire holding tubing stuff  to hold everything together nice and clean. 

Norton posted:

 Moltow Chrome. 

Pete

Where can I find this? 

Bruk posted:

Norton posted:

 Moltow Chrome. 

Pete

Where can I find this? 

Hobby Lobby keeps this on the shelf.....you can buy it as a paint pen that will flow very nicely on headlight reflectors...I’ll post up a picture of the pen for you here in a minute.........Pat

Here ya go Bruk...

Bruk, I can not take all the credit for making nicer headlights for NYC stuff, Pete’s the one that turned me on to making better than OE headlights ....these are brass stampings I’ve made from a doming set......the reflector on the outside is painted with the Molotow liquid chrome paint pen....the other reflector with out any hole punctured yet, is obviously raw brass....but as you can see, the Molotow pen is worth it’s weight in gold, or chrome....ha ha ha...........Pat

I found mine on eBay but you will find it at Amazon, or many art stores like Blick's. I bought  1mm and 4 mm pens plus a refill bottle of paint that you can use in an airbrush for bigger jobs. I may have pointed it out to Pat but he told me the best way to use it for this application. Basically flood the area with paint and let it flow around. Don't try and paint it on like you would a magic marker if you want to high gloss shine.

Pete

"....cleaned them out with some IPA..."
Beer! is there anything it can't do??

So after everyones good input ill will be re-doing the headlight reflector, I just need to go get that marker! 

I continued work on the engine yesterday. I reworked the marker lights on the front. They were wired in series so they were a little dim for my taste. I rewired them to be in parallel and they look much better now. 

I also added new Cab lights. I took these little solder pads you can get a Ngineering.com and I solder two 0603 WarmWhite LEDs to them. I super glued them to the underside of the cab roof then wired them in parallel. I ran the wires through the old cab light hole and tied it in with the RCMC board. 

I adjusted the Firebox flicker boards height with some small brass stock so it line up with the fire box doors. I added some sticky back red LED strips to the sides of the motor to shine down through the ash pan. I solder them to the motor leads with a tiny Bridge Rectifier in line so the LEDs would always glow according to the motors polarity.

So I wrapped up the wiring in the engine minus the smoke unit(s) everything is working as it should. I set the loco aside and started working on the tender.

I laid out where I thought the best place for the boards would be and drilled and tapped for 4-40 screws to hold the boards in place. I’m using a MTH trim pot in place of the old one and mounted it above the Original Hole. I started wiring up the power leads to the LTC and RS board trimmed and crimped new connectors. I had to rework the IR wires to be smaller and longer due to the size of the connector that is used on the RS board. I had to cut off the original coupler connector and crimped the proper one that is used. I also wired in the trim pot to the RS board.

Since all of the harness’s used on this are made from scratch I had to make another to connect between the LTC and RS board. Crimping the 1.25mm connectors are a pain. I had to redo a couple because they rolled over in the crimps but in he end if not better than factory...which is not saying much.

I added a 0603 Warm White LED to the top of the doghouse and fed the wires down through the original bulb hole. I didn’t take a picture but I painted the wires black.

I used a 3528 Warm White LED for the reverse light. I covered it in heat shrink and used it zip tie around the old mounting bracket to hold it in place. I ran all four wires together into a 4pin connector and connected that to opposing side that connects to both the RS and LTC board.

I’m currently using the old speakers. I plan on installing different speakers for my loco. Probably going to go what Lionels calls “FatBoy Speakers” Which are just large coiled speakers. Hoping these will deliver more base. 

Impressive work! With all of this electrical work you're doing, I hope you find time to paint the handrails black. 

TrainMan1225 posted:

Impressive work! With all of this electrical work you're doing, I hope you find time to paint the handrails black. 

Thanks! I do plan on doing that and painting the the drive wheels black as well. 

Great project, and it's looking like it's coming together really well!

BRUK said:

"I’m currently using the old speakers. I plan on installing different speakers for my loco. Probably going to go what Lionels calls “FatBoy Speakers” Which are just large coiled speakers. Hoping these will deliver more base. "

Fabricate an enclosure for the speakers. Doesn't have to be fancy, just keep sound from leaking out the back.

rex desilets posted:

Fabricate an enclosure for the speakers. Doesn't have to be fancy, just keep sound from leaking out the back.

I actually liked the sound better out of the original speakers compared to the new ones.

When I reassembled the original speakers to the frame, I sealed those risers to the frame and the speakers to the risers to get a better air seal and it made it even more louder. I probably will build a baffle out of Styrene later. But the tender shell does a nice job already. 

Here is a quick test. There is no smoke installed yet,

Time for some smoke!

Wow, missed a lot since I last eyed this up. Looks fantastic, really class A, A#1. Amazing. 

gunrunnerjohn posted:

Time for some smoke!

I know! I spent a couple hours trying to come up with the best way to do it. Still haven’t gotten there yet....

So far, so good, Bruk! The 2000 Class A has been a favorite of mine, so seeing it getting full Legacy will be a blast. The sound is a great improvement over an already pretty good sound system.

Bruk posted:

gunrunnerjohn posted:

Time for some smoke!

I know! I spent a couple hours trying to come up with the best way to do it. Still haven’t gotten there yet....

It's going to be tricky getting whistle smoke and an easy way to fill the unit.  I have looked at several that I'd like to do that on, but I'm hesitant to start drilling holes in the boiler and have it not work well!

gunrunnerjohn posted:

Bruk posted:

gunrunnerjohn posted:

Time for some smoke!

I know! I spent a couple hours trying to come up with the best way to do it. Still haven’t gotten there yet....

It's going to be tricky getting whistle smoke and an easy way to fill the unit.  I have looked at several that I'd like to do that on, but I'm hesitant to start drilling holes in the boiler and have it not work well!

Maybe get a shell of eBay for a simple engine that's cheap. Of course I guess it wouldn't be the same because of the interior space constraints. Almost like working on a Jeep changing the oil and the doing it for the old Ford Escort. My uncle hated that little car, he was more comfortable helping out on my Jeep(more room).