Hi,
I was wondering how much you think an upgrade for a k-line engine to the K-line Cruise control, because I just had it done and it ended up costing 80 bucks. TO me that sounds a little steep, is it?
Alex
The K-Line cruise not only includes the driver board but a new motor as well. I believe they sold for around 50 dollars when first offered. If you paid someone to do the install it seems reasonable. I’ve done a few TA Studios EOB drop in boards on Lionel steamers that already featured Odyssey cruise control. A little over a hundred for the board and I supplied the labor.
The $80 was just for the labor, I bought the upgrade sepretly
Doing one yourself for the first time is always time consuming. The more you do the less time involved. A good repair guy should have the procedure down. In doing the TA EOB boards the majority of your time is spent installing the timing tape and getting the tach reader shimmed. In the K-Line install the motor is ready to go when you get it and is just swapped out. I believe the driver board is simply unplugging the connections and reinstalling them in the new board. Eighty does seem a little steep. If it was a steamer hopefully the cherry switch was removed and it was set up for programmable chuffs. A little more time involved for this. But not time consuming if you’ve done a few. There is time involved as well in programming the board to get the chuff in sync. TA Studios posts labor costs for their EOB upgrades on their site. www.tastudios.com . EOB is a little more complicated as I mentioned and 80 dollars is the highest rate shown on a brass steamer. These are pretty involved as the electronics all reside in the tender and a new tether with extra wires must be added. Not a simple plug in and some soldering is required.
Alex,
Are you happy with the new upgrade? If you are, you should enjoy you “new” engine, not worry if you got took. To me it sounds like you did good. I myself as we speak have my scale Berkshire in the TA shop for a EOB board installation. This engine has everything, everthing except the four chuffs! It’s going to cost a total of 180 bucks. Dave Connolly, on my Berkshire, Do you know if they’ll change my whistle? I’m don’t partically like it. Have they’ve done good work?
Reuben
I’m hapy with it but I just wasnt sure about the labor costs, but I guess it was a fair price
Rueben, I do my own upgrades and have heard nothing but good things of TA Studios work. The few issues I had on installs they were very helpful. I’m guessing you have a recent steamer with Odyssey. The drop in board is an easy swap. The timing tape install on the flywheel and the tach reader install on the motor must be pretty much dead on accurate as far as the gap between the two. In order to get smooth performance. To get the chuff adjustable with Cab 1 requires soldering some wires to the reciever board. Not a project for the faint of heart with a soldering iron who is nervous about these things. I did my conversions for pretty much the same reason. I wanted 4 chuffs and this was the easiest way to obtain it. The extra speed steps are nice as well. If the 180 includes the new Drop In board, setting up for selectable chuffs, and shipping it back to you. Seems pretty reasonable.
As far as your whistle. You would have to buy a new Railsounds card. Pretty much only generic ones are available. You can listen to the different ones on their web site. I had a Weaver brass steamer with TMCC but no cruise. I ended up buying the entire EOB upgrade just to get a more correct whistle. It was delivered with a generic set and the Prototype had more of a steamboat whistle. They offered the SP Daylight set which featured one that was pretty close to what I wanted. I ended up with a spare reciever board as well as a Railsounds power supply and soundcard. These can be handy at times when troubleshooting these things when something goes wrong.
Guys theres nothing like cruise. Except for a little jerkyness at times I really like my K-Line cruise engines and I think you’ll really like your EOB conversion.