I have a Lionel 230 C&O diesel engine that runs great. I have removed the 2-position E-unit and replaced it with a 3-position. I have a question about the field winding. Since it is double wound for the 2-position, I see that there are 3 options:
1. Use one of the field windings
2. Use both windings in parallel
3. Use both windings in series
Without experimenting with the 3 choices, which do you think would be best?
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David, Just use one of the field windings. That works fine. I did the same on an ALCO 202 motor. No problems I can see.
We just had this discussion less than a month ago.
As KRM says, use one field winding and ignore the other one. The original E-unit only uses one field winding at a time, so only use one field winding in your conversion.
As RoyBoy and KRM wrote, just use one field.
This is how the Lionel factory service manual advised the conversion be done.
David from Dearborn - I did exactly what you are doing and I tried both parallel and series hookups. The series hookup was not good - motor speed actually dropped noticeably from that of using just one winding. The parallel arrangement did result in a barely perceptible speed increase (no load), but not enough to write home about.
Somewhere in the future when I can free up some more time, I would like to test the parallel hookup under load - it's possible it might give a different result. But for now, I would agree with just using one winding.
George
IMO, paralleling the windings is a bad idea, the motor is designed to use only one half of the field at one time. The impedance balance between the armature windings and field windings will be far different than the designers envisioned.
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