Hello, I have an old 1970’s vintage Jouef turboliner that is in nice condition but suffers from two design flaws. First of all, it only picks up power from two axles. Second, the motor in these things is a joke. Is there anyone here that has attempted to re-motor and add more electrical pickups? I’d like to find a compatible high quality motor that will be easy to install, and possibly run some lines throughout the 4 cars to pick up current on all trucks. I have some ideas but thought I’d post the question here in hopes that there might be a few folks that have done this already.
Thanks,
Todd Cline
First of all, I need to look up the Turboliner’s trucks, but I highly reccomend either NWSL for repower motors, and someone sells motors that are already attached to passenger trucks.
Power pickup is relatively easy, most of us encourage the re-use of Kadee sentering springs ( the copper thingys) just cut and flex it into an H shape, solder on a wire, and bend it around the truck to hit the wheels. Just be sure that the axles are all insulated to one side in each truck, and opposite of the other truck.
Actually, if you power just the front and rear engines, you should be alright (The ROhr turbo that Jeuoff is modeling is dual-ended, I think). I’ve got a Modelpower ICE that I flipped a second power engine around on, it’ll haul, despite being Dual-ended DC, only picking up power in the engine, (possibly two truck eac, not sure off the top of my head), and dragging 7 coaches along for the ride.
Good idea there with the Kadee springs. Only one “engine” is actually powered. The rear power car is a dummy. Not sure what you mean by “H-shape”, but I suppose any spring-brass/copper would work for the pickups. The wheelsets are seperatly insulated on all trucks. The factory setup on these has spring “brass or copper”? wipers off the axles, with through-pins contacting another set of spring “brass or copper”? wipers feeding to wires to the motor.( only on the one lead truck on one unit though)…( two axles)… Biggest question is, can I find a good motor that will fit this. I guess I should see if NWSL has a website that lists conversions. I haven’t tried that yet. It needs to be a very small motor… perhaps even an N scale motor might fit the bill… That brings up another question though, I have always been in HO scale. Would an N scale motor be compatible with HO scale voltage/current? I am running regular DC not DCC.
Still very much open to other ideas though…
Thanks,
Todd
Something like this:
HO & N scale motors generally have the same tolerances. Though, the N scale motor being smaller, may not have the same power output of an HO one.
Nick