n9

Thanks for the replies! I'm amazed that whatever I ask, the knowledge you guys have is exceptional. It does sound like replacements are the safest option, and trawling through my emails I've just seen that Dapol have replied and are actually going out of their way to put something together from some samples they have knocking around. So a big shout out and thank you to Dapol as well. I'll never know if the dodgy wheels came from the factory since this is a second hand model, but judging from a very wobbly Dapol 52 I had I'd say it's possible. Even so, with these models out of production, I think that taking the trouble to help is quite commendable on their part. Anyway, it's all these things that have been making the hobby such a pleasure since I got back into it.

I think they are cast wheels. A split axle design. On a N Dapol Class 22 which wobbles a lot. It's the metal half-axles that are bent. Can they be straightened? What's the best approach? My thoughts are to take a square block of something hard, drill a hole that matches the diameter of the axle, pop the wheels in and then gently tap them square/flat: Will that work? I'm not sure if the shafts will readily bend or if they are more likely to snap. And would a block of pretty dense MDF type board be stiff enough? I have some of that lying about that's dense enough to resist track pins being hammered into it. Here are some pics from a different 22 that does NOT have bent axles, just to show what these wheels look like. The metal half-axles run part way into the cylindrical plastic moulding with the gear: This might just be the final hurdle to getting this particular 22 as good as or better than new! Thanks!

Thank you! 603 seems to be 25 smackers where I live but I will get some if all else fails. Currently I'm on my second supergluing attempt, the first one having just not glued. Is it me, or are super glues getting ever more expensive and distinctly less super? This was Gorilla. I'm giving it the full 24 hours this time, having applied a little more than before with a needle. Might be too late this time around, but I'd dearly love to learn of an option that doesn't require heat to remove.

Thanks chaps! So far it sounds like super glue or thread bond might be the way to go, albeit don't think I could heat that up later to break the bond because the plastic collar does go right through the flywheels so the adaptors are sitting right inside that plastic - you can see that in the last pic. So I'm still open to other suggestions if there are any.

I'm after a semi-permanent solution because I fear super glue might make it impossible to remove parts in future without causing damage. Is the answer a tiny amount of superglue? Enough to attach but not enough to break parts should I need to remove the flywheels later? Or something else? Detail: I'm fitting the flywheels onto a new coreless motor I bought from Tramfabriek on my N gauge Dapol Class 22. This is what the assembly looks like with the old motor: So at each end of the shaft there is a flywheel with a plastic collar that serves as a socket for the worm mountings to plug into. Here's the same assembly with the worms "unplugged": And here is the new motor with the flywheels and collars ready to go back on: The drive shaft on the old motor is 1.5mm diameter. On the new motor it's 1mm. So brass adaptors (small brass cylinders or bushes) are provided in the conversion kit and you can see those already fitted to the flywheels in the last pic. The problem is that it should (ideally?) be a pretty tight fit for the adapted flywheels onto the shaft, but it isn't. Sven (of Tramfabriek) sent me a picture showing how they should be delicately hammered on. But while mine are snug fit, I can easily slide them along the shaft with my fingers and the worms would definitely slip. Overall this has made me realise I don't have a clue about how much torque a shaft needs to overcome at N scale. Thank you! I'll end with some other inconclusive ideas that have flashed through: . Painting the shaft ends. . Kapton tape on shaft ends. . A few strands of copper wire twisted along shaft. . Copydex. . Paint as glue. . Get adaptors with slightly smaller holes if they exist. . Solder. But spaces are way too small for a tip. So wrap a bit of solid core around the soldering iron tip and use the solid core as a tiny soldering tip? I've ruled out knurling and anything requiring a lathe or dismantling of the new motor.

Sure! I'll be giving it a go soon and my intention is to post some kind of update or guide. The kit has arrived though: Pretty quick turnaround and delivery time given the usual Customs nonsense getting stuff to me. As you can see, I got the gear puller too to get the flywheels off the motor, although Sven suggested it might not be necessary and that gentle prying with a couple of flat screwdrivers either side of the driveshaft can do the trick. (I wanted the gear puller anyway because it just seems useful to have and will probably also help remove some types of wheels.) Sven also said that the plastic collars either side of the flywheels can come off just by pulling with fingers, so I will be trying that first. If you don't want to wait for me, I think the Tramfabriek Class 52 guide should give you enough general knowledge. I'll be relying on that guide for the motor swap part because I'd already stripped my Class 22 right down. My feeling is though that if you're not hamfisted with these sorts of things it should be reasonably straightforward, with the main dangers probably being bending the driveshaft or damaging delicate mouldings/cosmetics or the usual risks with soldering.

That's good. Where are you seeing this? For over a month I missed the closure, so clearly I need help staying in the loop.

Alright, so let's see if I've understood. Assuming DC operation: 1. The suppressor circuit, which in this case is a capacitor with an inductor soldered to each of its legs, doesn't care about polarity; if you supply it with positive to either leg with negative to the other, it will do its suppressing thing. 2. A positive and negative motor feed ending up respectively at the corresponding positive and negative terminals on the board, just means the forward direction of the locomotive will be, say A. But if those feeds are switched over (as in this case) it just means the forward direction of the locomotive will be B instead of A. Maybe I should have posted this in the non-DCC electronics section, but is this correct? Thanks

Thanks for the replies! Maybe I need another coffee, but I'm not too clear that they answered my question. So I'll try to rephrase: In my example above, why did Dapol take the black negative wire from the motor and solder it through the suppression circuit to the positive terminal on the board, and take the red positive wire from the motor and solder it through the suppression circuit to the negative terminal on the board? I ask because I would have expected the opposite: the black motor wire to go through the suppression circuit and end up at the negative terminal on the board, and the red motor wire to go through the suppression circuit and end up at the positive terminal on the board. I'm just dead curious why it got wired that way. Thanks!

I mean the capacitor/inductor combo wired to motors for interference suppression. (Is there a proper name for this?) Pretty sure these things often just get removed for locos on DCC if/when it interferes with performance, but I'm curious as to the wiring. This is from a Dapol loco: The pic isn't the greatest (sorry), but the black (-) wire from the motor ends up connected to the orange (+) wire leading to the positive terminal on the board, and the red (+) wire from the motor ends up connected to the grey (-) wire leading to the negative terminal on the board. (In the pic, the red motor wire runs to the farthest capacitor pin but it's concealed behind the black motor wire running to the nearest capacitor pin.) I'm curious why the polarity gets switched over. Is it because the polarity doesn't matter? Or is it because it has to be switched over for the capacitor/inductors to do their thing? Thanks!

Bless 'em. They're still there doing the right thing. This from Amanda who just processed a previously agreed (before the closure) partial refund for me today for some second hand locos that weren't quite as advertised. I wrote to them yesterday not being sure if anyone was still there: "There are a few of us still here dealing with the last emails and calls. I will complete the refund for you today, there will be a separate email sent to confirm this has been completed. Thank you for your kind words and I shall pass this on to the remaining team. If I can be of any further assistance please let me know and I will be more than happy to help." TBH, the refund didn't cover all the parts I replaced but I don't care, no argument from me, I'd much rather have Hatton's back. I hope that when the dust settles and the sky is blue again, a bunch of them will team up and continue, because 50 pages and counting to me says they were doing an awful lot right. And it's not just the volume, it's the words.

Damn. Think I must be the last person to learn of Hatton's demise. Literally just found out when I went to their site. And I'd recently been posting stuff on here as if they were still with us, completely oblivious to the fact. I am well and truly shocked. And I'm going to miss them dearly. Proper old school shop and service. What's more, finding myself living overseas, I found their Trunk service and DHL Express combo to be absolutely brilliant, in large part because it made Brexit customs hell completely painless. No other shop that I've come across does that. But generally, they were just brilliant and I loved shopping there. A huge hole has been left in the hobby. I wish them all well for the future.

Thanks for the suggestions! Definitely worth considering. I still have my next steps parked and I've been filling in the time repairing a number of locos. It's been time away well spent because the thought of starting over has been quite daunting and the loco tinkering therapeutic. It's also been good just to step back and let answers come rather than actively pursue them. And look, your suggestions/help just arrived without me even thinking about this! In the coming weeks I'm going to have a go at fixing Peco's trackwork. I'm buoyed by some of the success I had redoing some of the frogs a while back (for reasons other than bouncing), and some plasticard and brass strip has arrived this week so I can test tweaking flangeways and crossings. No idea how that'll turn out, but I think it's worth a go since I'd already bought the majority of the track, and laid about half of it, and it's a new track plan if I switch. Depending on how I get on with that, I'll either settle for my arch nemesis 🙂 or bin it/save it for a fiddle yard. I know beyond doubt that I won't be having locos behaving like rally cars. Bottom line, I haven't ruled anything out yet.

Oh I see. You mean this glue? You're right, the light board does indeed appear to be glued to the underside of the cab. I can see that being annoying if you need to get in there. In fairness, I'm going to order driveshafts plus worms in addition to new bogies because I noticed they occassionally weren't meshing properly, so I just had to open it up to inspect that side of things 🙂

Oh no! I didn't get that far into the loco. Thankfully mine seems to be fine in all other respects. I have other locos that wobble a bit and I'm okay with that, but this one is considerably worse. But useful to know there are reasonable performers out there.

I've just located some replacement bogies which I'm considering buying. So another way you can help, if you know about these things, is if you can tell me what caused these wobbly wheels. Was it a bad production run? Is it just a bad design inherent to this model? Thank you!

This is the third of the "Fine when last run" locos I purchased from Hattons recently (2D-003-012.) This is pretty much how all 3 bogies (including the spare) work on it: I'm reminded of pizzas being tossed. Clearly the wheels and/or axles are all out of kilt, and the loco has no hope of running without wobbling all over the place. Here's another look at the assembly: From what I've gleaned from 00 posts (and I fear it's a similar story for this N,) the stub axle design is something of a nightmare. In one post I read here, a lathe and pretty much a complete rebuild of the wheel and axle assembly took place to get rid of the wobble. But... is there a more sensible fix that I've missed? If not, what are my options? Would replacement bogies (assuming I can get them) be doomed to suffer the same fate? I completely stripped and cleaned the bogie assembly shown in the video and reseated everything as squarely as it will go, mainly just to discount gunk and build-up of crud being a possible cause, but to no avail. I'll end by saying these posts aren't intended as a dig at Hattons, because I've generally found their support to be good and largely I'm up for tinkering and fixing when I can, but I do think that faults like these should be clear in their descriptions and the items priced accordingly. They weren't. Here are the other threads regarding these locos if you're interested: Thanks!

It’s not listed on his site yet because Sven is still writing the manual, but you can get it from this link: https://tramfabriek.co.uk/#!/Dapol-Class-22-coreless-motor-upgrade/p/587614078/category=0 I only found out because I’d been enquiring about his gear puller for my 22, so it was a real surprise to learn he actually now had a coreless motor kit available for it. I ordered it yesterday, and it was despatched the same day. Great service and a lovely chap to boot. I got Sven’s permission to share this link. I’ve no affiliation other than a happy customer, and I’m sharing it in case others have been waiting for this upgrade kit to become available too.

Thanks Andrue. I mentioned somewhere further up that I suspect the two batteries I tried might be dodgy. New name brand ones should be arriving tomorrow and I'll test again. I think that's a fine Queen Elizabeth you have there! Clearly both my motors should run fine on batteries.

It probably contributes something, but I don't think that's it otherwise both the new motor and the "hot" motor would be just as hot as each other - the new one runs about 20C cooler under the same conditions.

Would have replied sooner but last night I cack-handedly blew, as it turned out, an impossible to source fuse in my shiny new multimeter. Innocently Stupidly I assumed measuring current would be just the same as measuring voltage. A few YouTube videos later… NO IT’S NOT!!!! IDIOT!!!! Anyway, I’ve rigged my old cheapo multimeter to work again. Results with Combi @50% throttle: For the "hot" motor: (10A scale) mostly fluctuated between 0.2 to 0.3, and closer to 0.2 after it had been running for around 5 minutes, occasionally dipping to 0.15. For the new motor that I know works fine: (10A scale) mostly fluctuated between 0.02 and 0.04. So it seems like the "hot" motor is drawing substantially more current than the new motor. I guess the next thing is to test where resistance is high. Just realised people have been talking about a PP9. I think the equivalent name of what I've been using is PP3, i.e. smoke alarm type, which maybe doesn't have enough juice.

If 9V batteries should be driving them, I suspect the batteries. They are standard 9V batteries but both are cheapo Chinese affairs. I've ordered a name brand which should be here in a couple of days. Definitely the motor from the new 22 (the one that hits 40C) is fine and that loco itself runs fine. It's the second-hand motor (the one that hit 61C) from a second hand 22 that I was concerned about. That loco ran very poorly when I first got it. Now, after stripping the loco down and giving it a lot of attention, the motor seems to be running okay again aside from the higher temperature. As some have already said, that might be normal for these Dapol motors. Some interesting stuff to consider here, appreciate it! It's the fact that we're not looking at a rocket that I find vexing, it's just a couple of magnets, a bent bit of metal and some wire on a spinny thing. Remember that the Combi supplies 0-12 volts and both motors turn throughout that range, so the batteries are just for me to rule out a problem with the Combi - which I doubt because it's also new. And 9V batteries are good to have around anyway, so win-win! 🙂

Thanks everyone. Interesting that the views expressed have been quite varied. To paraphrase: it should probably run warm at most, or these motors are known to run hot sometimes, or if it doesn't melt the plastic it's okay! Now that I know that the melting point of a bodyshell is around 120 degrees, and that some of these motors are known to run hot, I'm much happier leaving the motor as is. That said, I'll probably still tinker and try to work out the discrepancy. I don't necessarily see these things as a problem (only if they really are!), I'm just mostly very curious about things and quite enjoy improving them if I can. I've tried 9V batteries as suggested, but neither of my 9V batteries drives either motor. They actually output 7.4V and 7.2V but I'm guessing that it's their current that's insufficient.

Well that’s disheartening, but thank you. In the interests of science, here’s what I’ve now done. I’ve dug out another N Dapol 22 (brand new this time, very seldom run.) I removed its chip and desoldered the feeds to the motor. So while the boards and lights are still on it, they are disconnected and I figure its motor is pretty much in the same situation to test as the “hot” motor was. If anything, on this one it’s a little more insulated on account of the frame still being in place and foam insulation not removed from the far side, so it might be expected to run a little hotter. This is the new motor being tested just now: And this is what I found measuring the temperature at the same spot: 34/93 degrees after 10 min @ 50 on Combi 40/104 degrees after a further 5 mins @70 on Combi So that's about a third less temperature. Perversely, the new motor is more noisy than the "hot" motor, and the new one also runs less steadily with quite noticeable fluctuations in the sound it makes as it runs. (It has been run in.) So... what is making the “hot” motor run a third hotter??? It's pretty clean and pretty smooth. I've not been able to get a look at the commutator, because one brush screw is cross-threaded and I'd have to drill it out without a replacement screw and without a tap. The other brush I did take out and it was absolutely fine. I also thoroughly syringed IPA into all its nooks, and although some grime came out, it didn't look horrendous. Any suggestiions? (I don’t think the Combi has any feedback shenanigans going on. It’s this model, and here are the instructions for it.)

Maybe. Just conscious that bare metal isn't usually exposed to be touched, and I have the suspicion that most motors get hot. I just don't know how hot is "normal" for these motors. Or how hot indicates a problem. If it's not normal, then obviously I need to take another look at it, although it seems to be running fine in all other respects. Not sure, my layout build and plans for it are on hold. That's kind of why I ran it at 50% and 75% throttle. It definitely wouldn't be doing silly speeds though.