Pittman Motor Mod in Pullmor Hudson -Now in Revenue Service.

Bruk, Pat aka Harmonyards has a more elegant way to mount the motor, simpler than the way I did it. As for the electronics when I did this Lionel required you send them old RCMCs to get a new one. They would sell you 1st generation Legacy which used a R4LC and I found an early BEMC (actually a 9 bit Cruise M) now NLA. The downside of the Legacy R4LC is it only puts out one 9 bit serial data packet and the newest Legacy lite Railsounds boards require two 9 bit packets to respond. I was hoping to use the RS board from the Vision J1e 5344, perfect since the CV was 5344, but no soap. Maybe someday I will replace the electronics. You will have an opportunity to learn from my mistakes and do it right.

Pete

I learned a little about the RS-Lite boards from Jon Z. recently.  Turns out that the reason some of the commands don't work from the R4LC is really because the RS-Lite was made a little dumber and less "automatic"  Stuff like ringing the bell and other commands that "toggle" audio behavior now are sent as two separate and different commands.  This allows the RCMC to control what is happening without having to guess what the sound board is doing.  Makes perfect sense when it's explained.  There is one "brain", and the sound is now just a slave and does what it's commanded to do. 

Just wanted to post an update now after three plus years. Lionel produced their Commodore Vanderbilt with plain bearing rods on both their spoke wheel versions and Scullin disk engines. When the Central replaced the spokes with Scullins they also installed roller bearing rods on the CV.  I had wanted to install the proper roller bearing rods on this engine back when I built it. Turns out the only ones that are a direct fit for this 700E descendant were used on the scarce die cast Dreyfuss Hudson and they have been long out of stock. All other scale Hudsons including the Smithsonian, MTH, and 3rd Rail Dreyfuss engines use different axle spacing. Not by much, about .060”, but with siderods the hole centers must match the axle spacing or no go, literally.

One of the rods I had tried initially were from the Lionel Century Club Niagara. But like the other engines had a different axle spacing. I few months ago I decided to try an experiment to see if I could stretch them. I knew I could heat them and pull them but I needed to do it accurately and repeatedly. So I made a simple jig for my mill. The mill has a heavy table and can be lowered a precise amount. After a few trial and errors I found what amount worked, essentially about .010” more than required as some shrinkage (they shrink?) after cooling.

This is what I started with.

Here is the setup.

And here is the result. Note master fabricator, @AlanRail bearing retainer plate on the rod ends.

Main rod is also from the Niagara but mated to the CV main rod end to attach to the crosshead.

Test runs in Legacy mode show .3 amps quiescent current, motor stopped and .5 amps at 100 speed steps indicating virtually no binding. The 9434 Pittman is not even breathing hard.

Pete

And I thought I was doing something, …….and then here comes my man,…..with a homemade ( and accurate mind you ) rod stretcher…..this why I remain the student,…..I was fortunate enough to watch the blow by blow as Pete designed the system to work,,….absolute genius!…beautiful work!.

Pat

That's pretty cool Pete, I would have never thought of stretching the rods!

Wow! I've read through the entire thread, all I can say is that between all of you who have contributed to this, there is a wealth of knowledge, ingenuity, engineering, thought process and a host of other things going on here. Pretty impressive if you ask me, especially since were talking about models.  Great job to all!