I have an old Tyco General 4-4-0 that I would like to remotor. Since this uses a tender mounted motor (open framed) I would like to install a newer can motor. Has anyone done this before and can you tell me What motor you used and how you connected it to the worm gear through the 2.4 mm flexible coupling?
(In case you are wondering why I would want to do this, it is a sentimental piece, the first kit I ever assembled as a teenager -'nough said!)
Any help is greatly appreciated.
RicZ
I used a Canon DN16L which is a bit of overkill. It measures 16mm D x 20mm L with a 1.5mm shaft. I put a small piece of heat shrink on the shaft and the original tubing fit perfect. The 4-4-0 doesn’t need much power because the wheels slip so easily, not enough traction to pull three box cars full of Butterflies in flight.
Edit:
Make sure it’s 12 volts, Canon makes it in 24 volts too.
Mel
Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951
My Model Railroad
http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/
Bakersfield, California
I’m beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.
You might find some of the information on this link helpful. It describes replacing the motor in a Bachmann (Rivarossi style) tender with a can motor.
http://www.pacificcoastairlinerr.com/1879/bachmann_4-4-0/sound/
While neither of these links deal with the Tyco General, both are about similarly-sized locomotives, and may have some useful information:
Wayne
There are extensive articles on remotoring and upgrading the appearance of the old Mantua Generals on the Civil War Railroad and Modeling forum on Yahoo in the files section. The photo section of this same site also contains many images of reworked Generals as well as appropriate rolling stock. One of the main contributors, Alan Mueller, has furthermore written a small book on the subject, called “Mantua General Rebuild,” available on-line. These sources generally take the look and performance of the engines to a new level. But if all you want are suggestions on a basic remotoring, check out the blog on:
http://cwrailman.com/blog/remotoring-a-mantua-general-or-making-it-rtr
Actually, Mel, the Mantua General has decent enough traction - it just uses it all up pulling its own very heavy (and not very free rolling: pre truck tuner) tender! If the new motor is lighter than the original it might help things right there.
I remember when my best buddy as a teen fininished assembling his General and then we tried it out. The tender shook like a drunk with the DTs. And yeah, it pulled next to nothing that he had. Of course mostly what he had were 1950s vintage Walthers passenger cars that belonged to his uncle.
Dave Nelson
Back in the olden days, I got enamored about tender drive. I did two: a Mantua/Tyco 0-6-0 and a partially completed Penn Line 2-8-0. I was aiming for more weight in the boiler plus a geared step-down (4:1 in the 0-6-0 and 2:1 in the 2-8-0). The projects weren’t totally unsuccessful–problem was that I really needed a milling machine and the knowledge of its use.
Anyway.
I did find the problem of motor-golliwobbles in the tender. I solved this by making a three point bolster suspension for the trucks, with the “wide” part as wide as possible.
The other thing I did that worked nicely was have a piece of piano wire as the power transmitter from tender to loco. Well, that was the part that visually showed. There were (still are, on the 0-6-0) universal joints on each end. Kemtron, actually. I strongly preferred as petite a connection as possible.
I scrapped out the 2-8-0, because I really didn’t need a Pennsy loco missing parts (I bought it at a discount). The 0-6-0 is in a box in the garage. I say that a lot, actually.
Ed
Actually you are correct, the Mantua General is a decent puller for it’s size and weight. It just doesn’t do well on my 3½% grades. I also add extra weight to all my rolling stock which doesn’t help. The can motor is slightly lighter than the old open frame motor.
It’s been so long ago I don’t remember doing anything to improve the tender trucks but they are very free wheeling. Maybe changing out the bulb to a LED helped. [;)][;)][;)]
I rarely run the General, my Jupiter. It’s the wrong era for my l
I remotored mine with a 16x29mm coreless motor and flywheel. I also changed out the hex coupling on one end for tubing (so the universal won’t fall out) and quartered the drivers. It’s a fantastic runner!
NWSL’s 1630D-9 would be a good can motor for the General. Cut the shaft at one end, stick it in place with silicon sealant, and you’re good to go! The motor has plenty of torque and runs slower than the old open-frame motor.
A good friend had two brass Ten Wheelers that he wanted re-motored - the original open-frame motors were pretty-well worn out. I don’t recall now if the locos had gearboxes or open gears, but the locos were quite small and the can motors which I had would have been a really tight fit, if they fit at all.
What it did was to gut the original motors, removing the armatures, magnets, and brushes, leaving only the frame and bearings and replacing the original motor shafts with longer ones, which protruded into the space formerly occupied by the magnets. The original worms were installed on the new shafts.
I then installed the flat can motors atop the tender floors, flat-side-down. The motor’s shaft was then coupled to the extended new shaft in the old motor, using U-joints.
A test run seemed pretty good, except for the fact that the torque of the motor caused the tender to tilt in sympathy.
Installation of plastic bearing material (Kadee coupler box lids, cut to suit) between the tenders’ sidesills and the tops of the trucks’ sideframes solved that issue quite easily, and the black plastic was pretty-well unnoticeable. To complete the conversion, I stuffed lead into every cavity in the loco that would accept it, turning those little locomotives into little monsters. My friend was extremely pleased with the results.
These were well-running locomotives prior to the conversion, and continued to be so afterwards, with the added bonus of being more powerful.
Wayne
The replies are what I did a number of years ago, late 1990’s I think, on two Bachmann tender drive locos. I used can motors out of old CD drives and they had 1.5mm shaft. About the size mentioned already.
I converted them to DCC with N scale Lenz decoders. Today, you can buy much better decoders. The DZ125 would work very well but that has been replaced with an upgrade.
My Mantua General, I was fortunate to buy an upgrade motor with mounting bracket from Mantua for the tender drive before Mantua went out of the USA. I had a catalog from Mantua that showed their upgrade motors for their steamers. Still have a few catalogs from them somewhere. I doubt you could find those anymore.
If curious, go to HO Seeker Mantua page and look at the 1995 catalog, the last page of steam engines. MC-94 motor and mount.
All the tenders converted to all wheel pickups as Harold has done with his Bachmann 4-4-0 steamers. Fine tune these and they can run quite well.
I also have a stock IHC 4-4-0 tender drive before they left. DCC also. Runs ok and all wheel pickup on the tender.
Rich
d
Please explain how you connected the motor to the worm. The worm shaft is 2.4 mm while the NWSL motor shaft is 1.5 mm. Did you connect the hex universal to the flex tube, or what?
RicZ
For my Mantua #119 I used a NWSL Universal kit with a short piece of 2mm rod.
I slipped a couple of short pieces of heat shrink over the can motor shaft of my Jupiter to mate with the Mantua tubing. Either way it works very good.
The NWSL kit would be the best way to go if I have trouble with the tubing hardening from age. Both of my Mantua 4-4-0s are very old.
Mel
Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951
My Model Railroad
http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/
Bakersfield, California
Do you think replacing the rubber coupling with some neoprene tubing would also work. It should be able to stretch to accommodate the two shaft sizes.
RicZ
Model airplane fuel line seems to work well and stays pliable longer that the rubber or Neoprene tubing. It’s a semi-opaque plastic of some sort, and makes a good grip on the shafts, regardless of their diameter. The stuff I use has an outside diameter of about .140" (9/64") and an inside diameter of about .050". Because it has quite a bit of “give”, it can be forced onto shafts of various diameters.
I’m pretty sure that I bought my supply of it when I was still working, about 13 years ago, and a piece of it just now taken from its storage drawer is still flexible and easily forced onto a shaft of greater diameter.
Wayne
Not sure what size fuel line I got, but that’s how I fixed my brass RS-3. It had previously been remotored, but the motor wasn’t centered, it was offset to the short hood. The long hood end, there were some Athearn universals and components and it worked well. In the short hood end, there was effectively nooo drive shaft, motor shaft too universals to gear tower. As such, there was no fore-aft play on that end at all, and it would bind on curves. A short piece of fuel line in place of the universal couplings and it runs great, at least ontil I redo it again. Very handy stuff, that model airplane fuel line.
–Randy
I simply connected the tubing to the motor shaft on one end and the universal shaft on the other. The universal then goes from the tender to the engine like normal, with the original hex coupling in the engine. I did have to cut a longer universal shaft though, because the original shaft was very short.
On the somewhat related topic of adding weight to the Mantua General, I just happened to be paging through the November 1959 Railroad Model Craftsman magazine today and in the Trouble Shooting column page 56, a question about that was asked. The answer was that Mantua made and sold a special weight for the General as an after market part that fit into the cab. It was also suggested to replace the bottom retainer plate with one formed from 1/8" thick sheet lead “as from a telephone cable.” (There used to be a lot of lead around in common usage, far less so now for good reasons.) It was also relayed that one modeler, not interested in prototype fidelity, made “pants” around the drivers and driving wheel splashers (such as you do see on some vintage 4-4-0s) out of lead. Those three things were said to double the pulling power. Any more weight than that was feared to stall the motor rather than let the drivers slip.
I (and my friend who built and owned a General) were unaware of that Mantua after market part. But then I owned a lot of Mantua 0-4-0s and 0-6-0s before I knew that Mantua had made a full after market valve gear kit for them.
Dave Nelson