Hornby corroded class 31 chassis

[newbryford]

As above, Hornby aren't unique in mazak rot.

 

Heljan 47s for example.

 

Trix EM1 bogies used to dissolve in about 5 years.

Never saw any complaints on the net about those....................

Edited September 27, 2018 by newbryford

[Pteremy]

Nothing is safe...

 

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/05/preserving-plastic-art-spacesuits-science/

[Salmotrutta]

Nothing is safe...

 

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/05/preserving-plastic-art-spacesuits-science/

Too true - the foam packaging in some of my Lilliput coaches is now a sticky brown powder. 

[Holmesfeldian]

Too true - the foam packaging in some of my Lilliput coaches is now a sticky brown powder. 

 

 

My Sennheiser MD414 headphone pads turn to dust regularly 

[Salmotrutta]

And my Bose "Quiet comfort" ear pads - all mankey & sticky. Eughh!

[sandwich station]

As above, Hornby aren't unique in mazak rot.

 

Heljan 47s for example.

 

Trix EM1 bogies used to dissolve in about 5 years.

Never saw any complaints on the net about those....................

 

But was the net around then.

[RANGERS]

Finally got round to checking my class 31s stored in the loft again, first time I gave them a once over was about four or five years ago and the casualties then were two 31 270 models and a green toffee apple, all three were early models. Today’s check revealed new cracking in another 31 270, The toffee apple that replaced the last one and a further green one acquired secondhand in 2013, in perfect order at the time.

 

Of the eight I’ve had, only two are unaffected and I’ve little confidence that the other two won’t succumb at some stage.

 

Ebay will hopefully yield £20-25 each, only one of the eight cost more than £60 (the green one) so the loss will be around £150, less than some have lost but nonetheless a fair old write off. The concerns for just about every loco in my collection are raised by the latest find, with around 40 Chinese built locos in the collection, I fear there is more to come.

[RAF96]

I have several ‘tools’ and the textured black soft handles have gone all sticky - drills, torches, screwdrivers, etc. I had put it down to the heat over here but I have a drill-driver in UK going the same way.

 

Quality labelling and price doesn’t make them immune either.

 

Talcum powder helps damp down the stickiness for a while, but not ideal.

 

Rob

[sandwich station]

I have several ‘tools’ and the textured black soft handles have gone all sticky - drills, torches, screwdrivers, etc. I had put it down to the heat over here but I have a drill-driver in UK going the same way.

 

Quality labelling and price doesn’t make them immune either.

 

Talcum powder helps damp down the stickiness for a while, but not ideal.

 

Rob

 

At least you can still use them, whereas the 31's you can't.

[Andy Mac]

Finally got round to checking my class 31s stored in the loft again, first time I gave them a once over was about four or five years ago and the casualties then were two 31 270 models and a green toffee apple, all three were early models. Today’s check revealed new cracking in another 31 270, The toffee apple that replaced the last one and a further green one acquired secondhand in 2013, in perfect order at the time.

Of the eight I’ve had, only two are unaffected and I’ve little confidence that the other two won’t succumb at some stage.

Ebay will hopefully yield £20-25 each, only one of the eight cost more than £60 (the green one) so the loss will be around £150, less than some have lost but nonetheless a fair old write off. The concerns for just about every loco in my collection are raised by the latest find, with around 40 Chinese built locos in the collection, I fear there is more to come.

I take it you would have made use of the Hornby replacement/voucher scheme that was in place at the time?

[gobbler]

Heard about this problem......only just recently, got my green class 31, it was from the first batch, boo hoo !!!!!

 

Bought it new, ran fantastically,  been in the box as "new " after only being run a few times.  Had to dismantle my layout due to a move.....now several years have passed, have managed to get to run my loco on a club layout and it was making an awful grinding noise!

 

On closer inspection and i dismantled the body to find the body has split in the corners and that the chassis has started to disintegrate.

 

Is it too late now ?

 

yours most gutted!!!!

 

Scott.

[pheaton]

in a word.......yup

 

sorry

[Ravenser]

4 hours ago, gobbler said:

Heard about this problem......only just recently, got my green class 31, it was from the first batch, boo hoo !!!!!

 

Bought it new, ran fantastically,  been in the box as "new " after only being run a few times.  Had to dismantle my layout due to a move.....now several years have passed, have managed to get to run my loco on a club layout and it was making an awful grinding noise!

 

On closer inspection and i dismantled the body to find the body has split in the corners and that the chassis has started to disintegrate.

 

Is it too late now ?

 

yours most gutted!!!!

 

Scott.

 

The worst of it is the split body. 

 

As far as the chassis block is concerned , some folk believe you can essentially remove the ends and the main block will be good for plenty of years before it crumbles

 

Others have stripped out the bogies /motor /drive train and installed in a Lima 31 as an upgrade. I believe there may have been one or two attempts to scratchbuild a replacement frame to take the drive train

 

I have a failed 31 270 I should do something about at some point - possibly under an Airfix body 

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

 

On ‎01‎/‎10‎/‎2018 at 16:49, Holmesfeldian said:

Sennheiser MD414 headphone pads turn to dust regularly 

Only suitable for replay of music by living performers/composers?...

38 minutes ago, Ravenser said:

As far as the chassis block is concerned , some folk believe you can essentially remove the ends and the main block will be good for plenty of years before it crumbles...

The crumbliest of those I have acquired s/h is still perfectly functional, and I would guess at a decade more before there is any likelihood of failure of this, the worst specimen, given present rate of progress.

[RAF96]

There must be a healthy market for replacement machined aluminium or 3-D printed chassis for these models.

[Grizz]

I commented on my four examples earlier in this topic. One of them, 31270 batch is still unaffected......weird. 

 

The others, now that they have been rebuilt, seem ok and certainly run ok. Plenty of regular thrash seems to do the trick. 

 

My my young daughter though that they were 'Cinderella Engines', that turn into dust after midnight. No bloody happy ending to this fairy tail though.

 

I s'pose it is arguably biodegradable........but is this necessary what we want or expect from our model railways, that they decompose or self destruct at an random time........NAH! cobblers to that. 

Edited May 21, 2019 by Grizz
Missed a bit out of sentence

[Ravenser]

19 hours ago, RAF96 said:

There must be a healthy market for replacement machined aluminium or 3-D printed chassis for these models.

 

The mazak block provides a lot of weight. I think it's a fairly complex shape , so I suspect machining from solid would not be viable. A 3D print would work, but offers little weight - you might be talking about a 3D print chassis to take additional weight (in what form?)

 

At this point a 3D chassis frame on Shapeways might be a viable approach to take the recovered drive train/bogies , but how you get weight into the thing would need to be established. Re-using parts of the mazak block is complicated by the fact that the block will swell over time, and the serious difficulty posed by cutting the thing down in any way . What other weight could you use, and how much weight would a 3 D print frame be able to take? 

 

I hope there would be no issue about IP in the shape of a chassis frame 

Edited May 22, 2019 by Ravenser

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

20 hours ago, RAF96 said:

...a healthy market for replacement ... chassis (blocks) for these models. ?

Before even considering the production technique, that might be vulnerable to a superior new model of the class being brought to market, which would very likely liberate a fair quantity of  s/h Hornby models? ( I don't imagine that the trend for competing introductions already seen with classes 24, 47, 52, and announced for 55, 66, 91, 92, is going to stop there. The low rate of new traction classes entering  UK operation is going to see all other classes with the combination of a clearly weak model and large numbers long time in service in multiple liveries, get 'upgrade' models within the foreseeable future in my opinion.)

[Ravenser]

1 hour ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

Before even considering the production technique, that might be vulnerable to a superior new model of the class being brought to market, which would very likely liberate a fair quantity of  s/h Hornby models? ( I don't imagine that the trend for competing introductions already seen with classes 24, 47, 52, and announced for 55, 66, 91, 92, is going to stop there. The low rate of new traction classes entering  UK operation is going to see all other classes with the combination of a clearly weak model and large numbers long time in service in multiple liveries, get 'upgrade' models within the foreseeable future in my opinion.)

 

 

91 and 92 have not yet received new generation models . These are first -round upgrades

 

55 and 24/25 were probably the most questioned of Bachmann's "high spec" models, and both are now well over a decade old. The Dapol Western was also questioned...

 

But none of this addresses the real issue . I already have a modest pile of 31 bodies in stock which could be worked up into locos . All I need is decent mechanisms to put under them. The same goes for those with old Lima 31s

 

S/H Hornby models don't address that surplus of bodies over mechanisms. On the other hand a 3D printed chassis  to take a Hornby drive train recovered from a mazak-rot casualty might address the issue.

 

We have the very unusual situation with this class that the  Airfix and Lima bodyshells are generally reckoned to be about as good as the Hornby one , and even the Triang bodyshell is respectable. The big advance of the Hornby 31 was its mechanism.

 

The 31 was always better served than say the 37 or 55 or 33, and there are an awful lot of the older models knocking around. It's an effective means of re-powering them with decent profile wheels that is the difficulty

[adb968008]

A 31 would be ripe for picking for a new tool, though I think its best chance wouldnt be a high spec detailed one.. the Super detail bar on Hornbys is quite high.. opening doors, etc etc...

 

similarly Limas low spec one is held dear by many as its shape isnt bad, and Hornby holds this too.

 

Anyone considering a new 31 would need to be cognisant than Hornby can squeeze them on both cheap low spec and high spec with lots of liveries just like they did with the 66... they could flood both ends of the market.

 

But a 31 represents lots of livery potential, most of which haven't been explored in nearly 3 decades.

 

A secret 31, produced in a dozen+ liveries in one mass announcement immediately prior to release, at a median detail (hand rails, lamp irons, working headlights but not opening doors, sprung buffers or etched parts etc etc) priced at a mid range price could do well.... as in this instance the mass liveries exist in low detailed Lima already, so Hornby would struggle unlike the 66... and at high end detail it would need a lowered margin to compete.

 

If Oxford hadn't joined Hornby i’d have predicted Oxford for this. Maybe one for Heljan in the £120 price range ?

 

Edited May 22, 2019 by adb968008

[GordonC]

Hornby dont really seem to be in a rush to produce Class 31 liveries with some obvious exceptions not yet seen on the Super detailed model in the last 15 years since it came out. Obvious exceptions would be a BR Blue 31/4, BR Blue 31/4 with the white stripe, 31413s unique livery, 31407 Mainline blue, 31/4s in Intercity Mainline, a skinhead 31/4, Departmental Grey, Dutch with headcode box

[Roy Langridge]

Just took a look at my spare 31 chassis that I obtained as an insurance policy. If a like-for-like chassis block was needed it is quite complex shape, something simpler to just allow parts to be transplanted, but not trying to replicate the Hornby chassis block, could be simpler. I guess the question is, how many people would want a direct replacement that looked identical v those that are happy to have something functional but not identical.

 

It would be nice if somebody like Peter's Spares could persuade Hornby to order a set of replacement chassis blocks when they next do a run of 31s.

 

Roy

[Ravenser]

2 minutes ago, Roy Langridge said:

Just took a look at my spare 31 chassis that I obtained as an insurance policy. If a like-for-like chassis block was needed it is quite complex shape, something simpler to just allow parts to be transplanted, but not trying to replicate the Hornby chassis block, could be simpler. I guess the question is, how many people would want a direct replacement that looked identical v those that are happy to have something functional but not identical.

 

It would be nice if somebody like Peter's Spares could persuade Hornby to order a set of replacement chassis blocks when they next do a run of 31s.

 

Roy

 

You can't see the chassis block inside the body , so "functional" would suffice. There is then the question of whether the PCB can be transplanted or not , and how it might be attached.

 

But to my mind the choice is between a full replacement block, or a moulded cradle that would take the drive train and provide a solution for adding weight.

 

The latter could be generated in 3 forms - to fit Airfix , Lima and Hornby super-detail  bodyshells . This is viable for 3D printing (you adapt the basic CAD to suit), but a new block would realistically only suit existing Hornby  super-detail bodies

[Holmesfeldian]

13 minutes ago, Roy Langridge said:

Just took a look at my spare 31 chassis that I obtained as an insurance policy. If a like-for-like chassis block was needed it is quite complex shape, something simpler to just allow parts to be transplanted, but not trying to replicate the Hornby chassis block, could be simpler. I guess the question is, how many people would want a direct replacement that looked identical v those that are happy to have something functional but not identical.

 

It would be nice if somebody like Peter's Spares could persuade Hornby to order a set of replacement chassis blocks when they next do a run of 31s.

 

Roy

 

As I said several pages ago - I can produce replacements in Brass (denser than Mazak too!) if somebody can get a set of drawings to me!

[adb968008]

41 minutes ago, Holmesfeldian said:

 

As I said several pages ago - I can produce replacements in Brass (denser than Mazak too!) if somebody can get a set of drawings to me!

Wouldnt it be easier just to get a chassis and have a casting made from it ?

 

someone did that a while back for a Grange, the costs I recall were very low and the casting good for hundreds. If doing it commercially it maybe wise to ask Hornby first, but if it was a private venture between a limited few subscibers I wouldnt have thought it an issue.

Peters spares have produced some parts off their initiative, the gearbox casing of the T9 was one, which was mazak prone, they made a replica in brass.

Edited May 23, 2019 by adb968008