Walthers/Lifelike 0-8-0 traction improvements?

[mmagliaro]

Victor contributed a lot to that thread.  Among the things I remember him doing, he adapted a 5-pole armature from some other motor (I think the Bachmann 2-8-0) to fit inside the LL open-frame motor, to see if would improve the motor.  I did try that armature in the 0-8-0 motor, and even though it did not make any observable difference, I very much appreciate Victor doing that work to test the idea.

[Bill H]

I agree, but let's not forget Victor Miranda.  His a king on his own, with a different than Max personality.

Correct. There was a lot of brain power and skill sets on display on that old board certainly Max was among the brain trust. Have to admit I miss Victor at times.

[mike_lawyer]

Victor contributed a lot to that thread.  Among the things I remember him doing, he adapted a 5-pole armature from some other motor (I think the Bachmann 2-8-0) to fit inside the LL open-frame motor, to see if would improve the motor.  I did try that armature in the 0-8-0 motor, and even though it did not make any observable difference, I very much appreciate Victor doing that work to test the idea.

Has anyone heard from Victor recently?  He was a wealth of information, it's too bad he doesn't post here anymore.  I recently looked over at the Nscale.net board, and he hasn't posted there in a while either.

[mmagliaro]

Has anyone heard from Victor recently?  He was a wealth of information, it's too bad he doesn't post here anymore.  I recently looked over at the Nscale.net board, and he hasn't posted there in a while either.

I never hear from him, but rather out of the blue, about 6 months ago, he posted a comment under my "Rocket" locomotive YouTube video, so he's definitely out there somewhere.

[reinhardtjh]

Has anyone heard from Victor recently?  He was a wealth of information, it's too bad he doesn't post here anymore.  I recently looked over at the Nscale.net board, and he hasn't posted there in a while either.

The most recent sighting was him on Facebook.  I can't remember, either he responded to a post from @Lemosteam  or vice-versa.  John tried to entice Victor back to TRW but he declined.  This was several months ago.  Maybe 5 or 6 even.

[wm3798]

Victor alive and well and still tinkering.  He has been a great resource to me with my fleet of aging N scale steam.

He sends his best.

[mmagliaro]

Now you've really done it for thread drift.  What's the story on that 0-6-0?  It looks like it has new tender trucks with axle-point 8-wheel pickup.  Does it have a new motor or gears under the hood? 

[jeffstri]

Back to the original thread. I have a second 0-8-0 run that I bought new.  It had the same wiring problem as the first run,  It generally ran well in the forward direction, and pulling power (with the amount of weight I added) was similar to what others have seen. However, it did run jerky in reverse, and one of the 2nd driver axle bushings would occasionally move completely out of its slot and cause the drive train to seize.

I fixed the wiring problem by replacing all 6 wires with ultra-flexible silicone insulated wire (https://www.mcmaster.com/9564T2/) and moved the connector back toward the middle on the tender, hard wired a small decoder and glued the weight to the top the tender shell. I also shortened the drawbar by cutting a section out of the middle and splicing the ends together.

Shimming the 2nd driver up or down and/or shimming the other drivers did not fix the drive train seizing. I finally figured out that the mesh between the idler gear and the first 2 drivers was too tight, and that in reverse was putting a sideways pressure on the 2nd driver and was forcing the bushing out of its slot.

I finally fixed it by mikado-izing the drive train. I cut the teeth off the 1st driver gear, which decreased the idler gear pressure on the 2nd driver,  and like the Kato mikado only the 2nd, 3rd and 4th drivers are now gear driven. And to reduce any binding caused by the side rod I removed the side rod pins from the 2nd driver. It now runs perfectly – forward, backward, slow, fast.

BTW, I have a pdf copy of the A board 0-8-0 tread if anyone would like a copy - almost 7MB

[mmagliaro]

Too bad they didn't completely fix the gear tightness problem in the second run.  You'll note that I saw that in the first run and shimmer the axles to get away from the idlers and open up some "slop" (about .003 to .005, but that makes all the difference)

PM coming to ask you for a copy of that Atlas thread dump.  I would love to have it for historical purposes.