K's tender chassis drive

[Emmo]

Anyone had any experience with these? I have acquired one which is in working order but doesn't run very well. As far as I can tell the gears are slipping, yet when I try and spin the wheels with my fingers, I cannot for the life of me get any slippage between the worms and the gear wheels. If I run it as it is, eventually it will settle down and run perfectly and quite quietly too, but as soon as it's had a rest for a couple of minutes, off we go again back to square one.

 

Any help greatly appreciated, but please don't reply if all you can do is tell me that they are useless units and I should replace it with something else.

Many thanks

Martin

 

[Emmo]

Further to this, when I received the unit, the worms were just catching the edges of the the gear wheels which I thought was not right, so I moved them inwards to be a central connection with the gears. Are they supposed to be at the edge possibly?

[Coach bogie]

I have a couple of these and they work fine, if not a bit noisy but I put that down to the tender acting as an echo chamber. Worm and gear are inline on mine. if upside down, one of the gear sets does slip on one of mine. it needs the weight of the tender to keep it engaged. I cannot complain as my Dad built it in the 1960's and it is still going  working.

 

Mike Wiltshire

[DCB]

They are getting on a bit. Some of the motors were glued together and are coming apart at the seams which lets the gears get out of mesh.   Ideally the gears should be central under the worms, you may have to add shims or spacers between the gear and chassis sides as spacers between wheels and chassis push the wheels off.  There are a number of variations and I have a couple of different versions.   If the motor has come apart, or the brushes have worn out and you can't source new ones it is useful to know the 5 pole armatures fit Hornby X04 motors and also the Hornby Dublo 1/2" motor if you shorten the shafts.

It makes a gutless but smooth motor. Conversely there is a Triang armature, probably Dock shunter or Hymek which fits the teder drive or K's Mk 2 motors and makes a rough running but more powerful device.

The tender drive is a miserable device, making grizzling noises and not having much grip due to narrow wheel treads, hard metal material and lack of traction tyres.  Pulling light loads they can be OK and at least they don't make the track filthy like traction tyred tender chassis do.   They can make good tender motors to drive the loco wheels through a driveshaft to a loco mounted gearbox,  and can make good loco chassis if the wheelbase is anything like right.

[Emmo]

Thanks David, very useful information.

Martin

[russell price]

I have one which displayed the same symptoms. Mine was the cast chassis fractured and the motor in one direction would part the two halves of the casting,  still runs now only a little noisy!