Weekend Update 1/4/15

[BCR751]

/quote]

Peteski,

What is the part that looks like a coiled spring?  Is there a resistor inside or does the wire act as a resistor?  Or is it something else entirely?  Just curious.

Doug

[C855B]

What is the part that looks like a coiled spring?  Is there a resistor inside or does the wire act as a resistor?  Or is it something else entirely?  Just curious.

It's a choke, a/k/a inductor. It's part of an LC (inductor-capacitor) circuit, the capacitor being the yellow and green blob with "U01" on it. You'll see them in Euro-market models because they have fairly strict regulations about RFI (radio-frequency interference). The sparking of commutator-type motors generates radio frequency noise, and the LC tries to control this, or a least suppresses the noise so it doesn't turn the rest of the wiring into a big antenna.

You also see this on current Bachmann models sold in North America, but only so they don't need to make a different version for European customers.

[peteski]

Lemosteam: that sounds like those would be the correct brushes.  If you can spare it, I would even take the complete motor. Maybe it has a better made commutator than the one in my loco. It would be easier to swap the entire motor than just a commutator (from another motor).

Doug, that is a choke as Mike explained (along wit the reasons for it).

[bbussey]

Impressive Pete, very impressive.

[mmagliaro]

Peteski,
Beautiful work on that engine!  And that engine itself is a beautiful piece of engineering.  Nice drivers,
beautiful valve gear.

About that motor, I think I have some old Trix motors that look like that one lying around.  I will check.
But honestly, for the size that it is, wouldn't a Mashima 1015 fit in there?  It would be 10 times the motor
that Trix thing is.  It would make the whole engine run so much better, and from the looks of that, it
would drop in with minimal fuss.  You would just have to pull the worm and transplant it to the new
motor.

[nkalanaga]

Peteski:  Have you ever seen a traction motor brush?  The PIECE, and it was broken, was a rough cube, a couple inches +/- on a side!  There was a lifetime supply of graphite in that thing.  I wish I knew where it was.  It's around here somewhere, but I haven't seen it for ages.  Haven't needed it either, because the old razor finally just fell apart.  But the motor still ran...

[Baronjutter]

I was sick this last weekend so I was able to get a lot of work done as I missed a day of work as well.