I started working toward a smoother, slower running ‘Streets car today by building and testing two versions of the WBB sedan chassis with a flywheel motor. All street’s vehicles suffer to some extent from stuttering and even stalling at low speeds: with only three contact wheels (the fourth is a traction tire), two tiny center pickups, and a rather light weight pushing them down on very thin rails, electrical contact is marginal particularly at low voltages/speed. I measure the quality of running by how slowly a car or truck will run without showing a sign of stutter. The WBB sedans are better than some others – they run smoothly at around 45 – 50 mph, a nice country road speed, but I’d like 25 mph or below – to run on downtown streets.
Anyway, I used the chassis from a WBB sedan. I removed the rectifier because: a) it normally sits in the space I’ll need for the flywheel and b) I remove them on all my vehicles so, when run on DC, they will back up. I also removed the stock motor and gearbox. The white plastic plate you see in its place is a retainer I made: without it the rear axle's bearings can pop out of the chassis. I alsospent over an hour with a Dremel on the surprisingly stubborn metal, in order to make room for the flywheel.
The first photo shows a motor of exactly the same size and shape as stock (same numbers stamped on its side, too), but with a longer shaft coming out the back and a small flywheel. I’m juse electrical tape to keep in in place but it works very well for that, at least in an experiment. Maybe it runs better: given that my measurements have to have a small amount of measurement error, and that “smoothly” is a bit of a judgment call, I can’t really say it does. I timed it at 45 mph (versus 45-50 for the stock) smoothly, so all I can say with confidence is that it doesn’t run any worse. Either the stock body or a White Rose diecast ’50 Ford body will fit this on this chassis– the only sacrifice being I can no longer fit the “interior” front seat because the flywheel takes that space.
The second test vehicle used a motor with about twice the volume of stock - sort of like dropping a 427 in instead of a 305 - with a noticeably larger flywheel. It ran smoothly at just under a scale 30 mph – something approaching success. Here, the motor sticks up at an angle so that no car body will fit on the chassis - but that was jsut for the experiment. to flatten it to where the bodies will fit over it, I have so much metal that grinding with a Dremel is out: I will have to disassemble it including separating the two parts of the adjustable-length chassis, and take a bandsaw with metal cutting blade to the rear half. Then the motor should nestle nicely into chassis while fitting, hopefully, under a car body. This test proved the concept.
So that brings me to this third picture (below). This is the motor in the second experiment. I have just this one. I want others. But I have no idea what this motor came out of or where to get another. Whatever it is from, it came just like this: with the worm gear and with the flywheel. Does anyone know where these are used? I’d actually buy some used locos just to get the motors if necessary, I just don't know where and what to look for.
