Evening all,

Since the last update on Spencer i havnt done mush with it, the trackwork for my 009 wa a bit dodgy so i have been slowly sorting that out and also building up some bargain parkside kits for the 00, so Spencer has been sat around for a while waiting for a break in the wether for a coat of satin varnish and somewhere to run.

Now, as payday was last week and a bit of overtime time came through, i decided to take BernardTPM's advice from my last entry and get intouch with Branchlines for a new motor, the Minitrix motor frankly was a bit poor and Spencer was no where near as good as the new farish 08 powered Pecket & Drewery so i bit the bullet and emailed them last week for advice.

I ended up with a Mashima 9/16, 90degree mounting plate and a 6/12 1.5 mm bore fly wheel. I ordered the bits last Friday and arrived this Monday, so all credit to Branchline for excellent service. Now i have never attempted owt like this before so on monday i dived in to see what was what, stripping off the 70's (?) Minitrix rubbish was the easy bit so a lot of tea was drunk whilst i figured out how to get the new motor mounted and working.

After a while iI figured out it was do able so cracked on, the Mashima shaft is 1.5mm where as the original minitrix one was 1mm. I got the worm off by heating on the hob and giving it a pull, and thankfully it came off without damage to me of the worm. I carefully reamed it out to get it to 1.5mm bore and thankfully got it straight so it sat on the mashima shaft well.

Next, i dismantled/destroyed the minitrix motor and extracted the original bearings, and bored them out to 1.5mm which allowed me to mount the new motor pretty much extactly how the original minitrix motor was. Disaster struck when one of the 2 sprung steel mounting clips snapped leaving me with the motor free to move at one end. So monday night ended on a bit of downer and no pics!

Tuesday came round and id hatched a plan whilst pro crastinating at work, i had some sprung brass strip so repaired the spring clip by soldering it over the top of the clip and bending at right angles so that the i could solder the snapped leg of the clipon the inside to render it usable again.

All systems were go and i was quite inpressed i could get the motor mounted and the worm to mesh so i fixed the flywheel on the back and mounted the mounting plate, packed out the chassis underneath the motor with a bit of plasticard and went for a test.

All was well on the workbench with power applied but on the track it was dire, so tonights job was to sort the rubbish pick ups out, and mount the motor so it runs the right way.....

All was well, but now i couldt get teh chassis under the body as the Mashima motor is wider than the minitrix one, so out came the dremmell........

Minitrix

Mashima

Id filled the inside of the tanks with liquid lead so as you can imagine, it was a bit of job to open the body out but thanks to a nasty looking dremell tool i managed to get enough away to get the chassis to sit and not short.

Thankfully i didnt go through the tanks of firebox top and destroy my fingers and on the first test all was well and iv had Spencer trundling up and down the sidings with great success. Very pleased with a couple of nights work to get a very good running loco and just a bit relieved that i managed it!

Next job is to get some satin varnish on and to get the plates i ordered from narrow planet on the cab & tank sides and i can it done! Couldnt reccomend Narrow Planet more, great service and the plates look great, will be back for more im sure, ill get pics up once we get some warm, suny weather up here in grey dull Yorkshire!

Cheers for looking

James