The quit bashing Bachmann thread has made me think about my only Bachmann locomotive a Q Northern steamer. I never run it because it runs so poorly. I have read that Bowser makes a complete chassis/motor replacement for this locomotive. The fact that they offer it at all would suggest that there was a market. Anyway, has anyone on the list done this? Is it worth the investment?
Thanks
Simon
Simon,
I haven’t worked with one of the conversion kits, but I have built several Bowser engines. They’re very solid, fairly easy to build, and will last forever. Considering the Bowser kits use the valve gear from the Bachmann engine (one of the trickiest things to build), it should basically fall together. One thing to consider: the Bowser kit comes with a gigantic DC-71 motor, so it won’t be DCC friendly, and it will prefer to run fairly fast. Other than that, it’ll run for decades.
I also have the Bachmann CB&Q 4-8-4 Northern steamer. I love the locomotive but it does run poorly. I see Bowser makes the conversion kit #356. I just ordered mine , I was afraid since Bowser will stop making steam locomotives, this would be gone to.
So what kind of project am I looking at here, any photos of others who have done this? Any tips on the building and swap? And since weights are not included, what kind of weights are needed?
Also how will the working headlight be affected?
Any tips, stories, photos would be great.
Thanks,
Mark
o:
Not really. The stall current may be high (so size the decoder accordingly) but the DC71, especially the recent ones, is a torquey motor, and that’s what you need to run slowly.
My H9, with a recent DC71, can creep almost imperceptibly with no problems. Power is just full-wave DC, nothing fancy. I have 2 marks 12" apart on the layout (1 second to traverse= about 60 HO SMPH) and timed it at ~1 SMPH yesterday.
(Most of the beliefs about open-frame motors are only true about junky ones.)
A mechanism with binds in it will need to run fast to overcome the binds, so some care should be taken to remove those.