Has anyone ever retruked a older tyco engine, i wnat to convert this spirit of "76 into a all whell pick-up and all whell drive form its 2 wheel pick up and 2 whell drive. Its a 4 axle 8 wheeled engine,I think it is a SD45T-2,I think! Thanks for the help.
Why posting this twice?
did not mean to post this twice but the computer froze and i thought it did not go through, sorry bout that.
Why in the world would you want to … sorry. I was almost negative on Tyco again.
The Tyco “Spirit of 76” was a model of the Alco C-430, and was for the period a reasonably accurate model, although it was painted to represent a different unit, a Seaboard Coast Line GE U36B (No 1776, the first “Bicentennial” painted locomotive), The easiest chassis to obtain with the right type of trucks would be the Athearn “Blue Box” GE four motor unit, a U23B, U36B or similar. The real “Spirit of 76” used EMD trucks from a trade -in, but these would not be correct for an Alco C430, so try to get a chassis with “AAR type B” trucks that should look similar to the existing Tyco trucks. The truck centres on a prototype C430 are only 5" less than those on a GE U23 or U30/33/36 so if the Tyco locomotive was built to the correct dimensions, an Athearn chassis should be a reasonable substitute, but take the Tyco model to your hobby shop and check that the new chassis would fit reasonably well. There may be changes required on the end of the chassis and on the locomotive body pilots and the coupler mountings. The Athearn fuel tank will be a different shape, GE tanks were a different shape to Alco tanks, but you can decide if that is a problem.
Peter