@Lou1985 posted:Well that Premier FEF I got a couple months ago is fully functional. It came to me with no worm shaft, motor mount, motor, flywheel, or wiring. I added all the missing parts, upgraded the motor to a ball bearing 9234 Pittman, and added a PS3 steam kit. I modified the sound file with the whistle from the just released Premier Big Boy. Came out pretty nice.
Love it!!!
George
@Ron H posted:John,
Never ever thought about adding the sound deadening to the loco. Great idea!
Ron H
Ron the most effective sound deadening change was getting rid of the 550 motor Though the foam tape certainly does not hurt. With that 42:1 gearbox you really don't need the torque of the larger motor the 385 is more than enough. There is a 395 Mabuchi that turns at 12k and though I don't need it they are cheap enough and easy to swap I may buy a couple just to give it a try. j
bought this second hand and got what i thought was a fairly good deal. It was so dirty that i had to remove the shell and wash it to remove the caked-on dirt/dust. after a bit of a service and cleaning it runs great
Since I just had a addition added for my trains and have moved everything out of storage I'm pulling each engine, cleaning and oiling it and then running them on the oval I have set up for testing.
Frank
Got this thing running. Came with no boards, minimal wiring, no motor, and no driveshaft. The only wiring in the locomotive were the 10 pin connectors on each end of the wireless drawbar. I ended up combining a spare PS2 3V harness from a Railking 2-8-0 with what was left of the Yellowstone harness. It was a bit of a PITA, and took awhile, but it works. I installed a ball bearing 9434 Pittman in the locomotive and a PS32 board in the tender. It runs well and is massive. It's larger than my Premier AC6 Cab Forward and has less than 1/4" clearance in several spots around my layout. So no more articulateds for me....
Good job. No motor, etc.... to intimidating for me!!!
That feeling you get when you realize the PS2 5 volt board on your GG1 isn’t toast. Instead it was the switch that got inadvertently set to Pantograph instead of Track. Phew! 😄
All the Locos have basically the same gearbox but the final drive ratios were either 21:1 or 42:1. The difference between the two was that the 21:1 box uses a double helix worm and the 42:1 uses a single helix. j
Would it be possible to change out the worm in the Williams Challenger then? Is that why it's so slow and so loud?
anything available like this?
@Engineer-Joe posted:Would it be possible to change out the worm in the Williams Challenger then? Is that why it's so slow and so loud?
anything available like this?
Joe yes you can change the worm but the helical idle gear should be changed with it. However I had two locos with a mismatched worm wheel and they ran OK. A month or two back I posted a message that I had found a former engineer with Samhongsa in Korea who told me he could arrange for a short run of those gearbox parts but I would need to order 25-50 of them and likely mail one of the worms I wanted reproduced to him. I was hoping you would see the post but management at O gauge forum took my message down for what ever reason. Regardless I don't think I could get 25 orders in the first place so I did not pursue the issue. I don't know if the gear set you link to would work. The worm looks like a single helix to me. A double helix is the key to the 21:1 ratio. Joe you know what would be cool ? If you could install two 385 or even 395 motors in your loco. A motor for the front and another for the rear set of drivers on your Challenger. I think another problem you had was an eccentric "out of round" flywheel. Which is all too common on the Samhongsa locos. I have had to struggle with that flywheel problem. I turned to MTH flywheels with a spacer bushing between the flywheel and the motor shaft and their hard to make. I had to make one and it took me three tries to get an acceptable concentric one. Something I considered was a Mabuchi 385 motor from a diesel with a flywheel already on it. Just pull the worm off. That's a bit of fun also. It's a sunny day outside, think I'll go work on the Veranda. j
My flywheel wasn't perfect. At the suggestion of a post here, I removed it and used a piece of tubing to run the engine without the flywheel. It still sounded horrible at higher speeds. It only sounds good below 20MPH. So I abandoned the engine. It sits on a shelf now without a control board inside. I put that inside an Allegheny that had a blown board set.
Our grandson said it was his favorite engine and he always wanted to see it run. He likes the grey Challengers from UP. I have one in one gauge and he always wants to run it. All this prompts me to get it running again someday. I should buy a MTH version but I decided no more!
I have several engines on the shelf waiting for work and attention. I have more engines than I can run in a decent amount of sessions.
Thank you again and I hope someday to get a worm set to fix it!!!
I wonder if NWSL had any fixes?
If it were possible, I'd buy the balance of the gear to make the order move forward. I don't know how much that would cost?
@Engineer-Joe posted:My flywheel wasn't perfect. At the suggestion of a post here, I removed it and used a piece of tubing to run the engine without the flywheel. It still sounded horrible at higher speeds. It only sounds good below 20MPH. So I abandoned the engine. It sits on a shelf now without a control board inside. I put that inside an Allegheny that had a blown board set.
Our grandson said it was his favorite engine and he always wanted to see it run. He likes the grey Challengers from UP. I have one in one gauge and he always wants to run it. All this prompts me to get it running again someday. I should buy a MTH version but I decided no more!
I have several engines on the shelf waiting for work and attention. I have more engines than I can run in a decent amount of sessions.
Thank you again and I hope someday to get a worm set to fix it!!!
I wonder if NWSL had any fixes?
One of these days Joe we’re gonna cure that thing’s ailments and make a fine model out of it....I know we tried the motor route, and failed, so at some point we need to get into those gear boxes,.....does that Williams have captured axles, or can the geared axle sets drop out the bottom?......to be sure there’s got to be some NWSL gear boxes somewheres!.....even if I’ve got to machine the one end of one the worms for a coupler system between the two,......we just need a way to tame the beast,.....
Pat
I don't know much about the guts of it. I glanced but didn't know what to do. Now thinking about it, it would need two gear boxes reworked?
Having dual motors would be great.
@Engineer-Joe posted:I don't know much about the guts of it. I glanced but didn't know what to do. Now thinking about it, it would need two gear boxes reworked?
Having dual motors would be great.
That’s not happening Joe, ....but when we can get some real gear ratios, then you can put in a monster motor that’ll do the deed,....and get away from the 10,000 RPM + Cessna motor in there now,....that model needs to be down around 18-20 to 1, and then she’ll play nicely with your grandson,....I’m still curious if that thing has captured axles, or if it’s got bearings and caps ..one tell-tale if it has a spring loaded suspension system, ie; the drivers are free to float about, ....then this becomes a much easier task sans finding the parts,.....drop out axle sets means we can work on setting up the gearboxes while not having to handle the chassis so much,...
Pat
I'll go look again!
It appears each axle is held in by the bottom cover?
it looks like each axle bearing has a flat surface that rides on that cover? I have to look closer to see if all that's correct.
@Engineer-Joe posted:I'll go look again!
I’ll reply to this one so I’m not dragging pictures all up and down the thread,....that’s got a bottom plate, that just made the job a whole lot easier,.....those geared axle sets will come out the bottom, and can be serviced on the bench,.....all we need now is a couple gear boxes in a much more reasonable ratio,.....even if they’re singles, no worries, ....to be sure I can figure out how to machine a stub shaft out the end of one of them, then we’ll borrow parts from the RC guys, they have 4mm telescoping universal joint drive shafts in a dizzying array of lengths, ......this is a doable project, ....just got to find gear boxes,......compounds would be best, so you don’t see the drive shaft sitting just above chassis height....
I thought after the motor tobago you’d parked that thing, .....I’m glad you’ve revived it,....I don’t like quitting,....😉
Pat
I looked anyways and here's one cover off for now.
@Engineer-Joe posted:I looked anyways and here's one cover off for now.
Yep, ...those axle sets will drop out the bottom once the gear box bottom covers are removed,....I wouldn’t take a thing apart until you source a pair of gear boxes, ....that’s going g to be the hardest part,.....NWSL would have been the answer, buuuuut,.....so they’ll have to be scrounge sourced,.....the good thing about drop out axle sets like I mentioned, now we’ll have way less a chance disturbing delicate parts on those chassis halves since all we need to do is surgically get in there and remove just those two geared axles.....and it’s hard to exactly tell, but it even looks like we wouldn’t disturb any linkage and rods, as the eccentrics aren’t on the geared sets as well,.....I like surgical strikes,....pinpoint work, get out before damage can occur ,.....😉
Pat
Here’s what I’m currently working on
Access to this requires an OGR Forum Supporting Membership
