Williams engine question

You should move this question to the 3 rail forum. You will probably have better success in getting a response.

Thanks,  you are absolutely right.  that's where I thought I was........Sorry

 

How do I switch it over  ???

Doug,

 

What I have done to lock my older Williams F-7's in forward or reverse is to install a bridge rectifier. You remove the motor wires form the circuit board and connect one(yellow or blue) of the wires to + sign(+ or plus, like 3 + 2 =) on the rectifier and the other wire to the - sign(minus) and the power(center rail roller and wire from frame goes to both ~

I have a pair of powered F-7's for the Santa FE ad have used bridge rectifiers instead of circuit boards, you will get a slight speed increase with this as well.

 

Lee Fritz

Thanks Lee,  but I'd like to slow them down a bit also,  I think I've seen on here where  someone has used a bridge rectifier instead of connecting the motors in series to slow it down.  So would this require two bridges ?

 

Doug 

Doug,

 

There can be problems when motors are wired in series, if one set of wheels slips it gets all the power and may burnout a motor in long term use.

Parallel wiring don't give that problem as both motors get the same voltage and if one should slip the other should still turn and pull the engine forward enough to move again at regular speed. Try using either resistors or diodes to cut voltage to the engine, you can install them after the transformer output terminal.

 

Lee Fritz

I am not familiar with using a bridge rectifier to slow down an engine's motors. The reason that the Williams speed up a little after bypassing the circuit board is that the capacitors in the circuit board draws a couple of watts. If you install two bridge rectifiers you must make sure that the motors turn in the same direction.

I have used a 6 amp 50 volt bridge rectifier from Radio Shack, about $7.00 each. Don't get the 8 amp version as you will pay more and you don't really need that much power.

 

The other way to slow down a Williams is to buy a lower voltage output transformer like a Troller TAC 2001. It has two voltage selections and whistle buttons, has two power outputs to the track.

 

Lee Fritz

Use 2 , 6 amp diodes instead of the bridge. Half wave each motor with opposite halves of the sine wave. This is as effective as series wiring without the drawbacks of uneven power distribution to the motors associated with series wiring of the motors.  For slowing down those with reverse units,I use this method

 

www.jcstudiosinc.com/BlogShowT...=488&categoryId=

 

Dale H

Thanks everyone for your replys in ref. to reducing the speed.  However my original question is still without an answer.

 

* Has anyone installed a switch per the Williams website instructions to lock the engine in forward ?  That's my first priority.

 

Thanks,   Doug

I think the easiest way would be to do a "reverse unit bypass" switch instead of a "lockout" switch. The basic idea would be where one switch position passes electricity through the normal reverse unit. The other switch position would pass electricity through a rectifier or diodes and then directly to the motors. Thus, bypassing the reverse unit. You could even use a three position (DPTT) switch to give you forward lock, reverse lock, and normal.