Kato Mikado

[Dwight in Toronto]

Thanks Max.  I had thought of trying a microdrop of CA in the pin hole, but was cognizant of the concerns you point out, so I exercised restraint.  I’ve never had any Walthers Goo.

The loco mech has since run a good 30 minutes in fwd, and 30 minutes in rev, at varying intervals and speeds, lying on its back in a foam cradle.  The pins have remained intact (thusfar).  Fingers crossed!

Decoder & speaker should be here in another day or two, so at least another 30 minutes or more of break-in time should be doable in each direction.

[mmagliaro]

Thanks Max.  I had thought of trying a microdrop of CA in the pin hole, but was cognizant of the concerns you point out, so I exercised restraint.  I’ve never had any Walthers Goo.

The loco mech has since run a good 30 minutes in fwd, and 30 minutes in rev, at varying intervals and speeds, lying on its back in a foam cradle.  The pins have remained intact (thusfar).  Fingers crossed!

Decoder & speaker should be here in another day or two, so at least another 30 minutes or more of break-in time should be doable in each direction.

For crankpins that screw in, a little drop of CA on the tip of the pin (not too much!) works well, and you can usually get it to break free if you want to unscrew it and take it out.  But on ones like the Mikado that push in, CA might lock it in so that you have to break it off and drill it out to get it out of there.

[peteski]

Have you checked the tightness of the crank pin on the other side?  Maybe what you think is a loose fit is normal?  Like Max mentioned, these pins are nto under much stress during operation.

Mikado's spoke inserts are made if a slippery plastic to which no glue will adhere well (including CA glue).  Feel free to use CA and if you ever have problem removing those crank pins I'll send you a new chassis with the drivers and motor. Seriously. 

Goo actually works because it is a sticky rubbery contact-cement-like adhesive which does develop some sort of a bond to the slippery plastic.

But make sure that both the hole in the spoke insert and the pin are absolutely grease free.

[Dwight in Toronto]

Max, Pete - thanks for the pointers.  The pin on the opposite side hasn’t been a problem, and I don’t want to do a “test tug”, preferring to leave well enough alone!

I’ll try things “as is” with the friction fit (and as Kato intended) to see if the crank pin stays put.  Should the pin ever pop out again, I’ll get some Goo.

[wm3798]

If you can't get Walther's Goo, you can use E6000, which is pretty much the same thing.  Another product that is sold economically by the ton at the hardware store that gets repackaged for the hobby crowd in a small package for a large price.

All this chatter makes me think it's time to pull my Mikado out of mothballs and see how she's doing.  Of course, mine is devoid of all the electronic wizardry, so if there's any issues, I'm sure it's nothing a squirt of contact cleaner can't fix.

Lee

[Dwight in Toronto]

Thanks Lee - I’ve never heard of E6000, but I’ll search for possible local sources.

LOL - just did an online search for E6000.  There are 15 tubes ($10 Cdn) in stock at my nearby Home Depot.  May as well pick some up!

[wm3798]

Turns out she runs just fine.


Her precisely engineered pilot truck found a track hiccup that went unnoticed by the rest of the fleet, so I made with the soldering pencil to relieve the slight kink, and after that she ran loops for an hour or more.

Lee

[peteski]

If you can't get Walther's Goo, you can use E6000, which is pretty much the same thing.  Another product that is sold economically by the ton at the hardware store that gets repackaged for the hobby crowd in a small package for a large price.

Well, except that they are both adhesives which stay flexible, there isn't much in common between E6000 and Goo. 

E6000 is transparent (Goo is brownish), is more viscous (Goo is more liquid when fresh), and they have very different fragrances (according to the old Polish olfacto-meter).   

Dwight, if the crank pin is rather loose then I would still recommend using CA. Those rubbery cements will likely not prevent it from wobbling and eventually coming out of its hole.

[randgust]

Goo has another 'magic feature' that you need to understand.   You can control exactly how 'tough' a joint is by what they call 'solvent release'.

Three methods:

1)  Soft joint.   Put the glue on it, put it together, walk away and forget it.   The softest joint
2)  Quick joint:  Apply glue, and immediately pull apart, leave apart for about a 10 count, re-attach.  Much stronger.
3)  Never again:   Increase that to about a minute for full solvent release, then re-attach.   You're not getting that apart, or moving it to reposition.

I've also heard you can heat cure it, but I've never prove it.

ACC has it's own weird properties, remember.

1)  It will about stick to anything, but it's incredibly brittle - a good 'shock shot' will break it free.
2)  Less is more.   Put too much on a joint and it's actually less strong
3)  You can get the really liquid stuff that has tremendous capillary qualities useful for thread locking or the 'gap filling' which you don't want for this job.    My favorite watery one is Duro.
4)   Make one tiny mistake on part placement, particularly with a screw, or even hesitate slightly getting it in, and you're done.  You may not be able to fix it or move it again.
5)  Never, ever, ever EVER apply from the tube.  One mistake and it's a catastrophe.   Make a puddle on plastic or wax paper and apply with a needle, a short piece of insulated wire, anything, but don't get that tube tip near anything unless it's supposed to drown the joint.
6)  If you DON'T want it to stick someplace, like the head of a crankpin screw, apply just a hair, less than a drop, of Labelle 108 on that to keep the glue from crawling up there.

ACC has another advantage but not in this situation - if you are jointing styrene layers it will not warp the joint over time.  Just get it right, you won't get a second adjustment.
And remember it was deliberatly designed to glue up skin for field wounds.

[nkalanaga]

Another possible solution is Seal-All, a contact cement as gas tank sealant, sold at many US hardware stores and, at least locally, Wal-Mart.  I've used it for years for repairing almost anything, but be careful on platic.  It WILL damage styrene!

[Dwight in Toronto]

Wow.  Awesome tutorials on the intricacies of using Goo and CA.  I hope everyone sees that!

I’ve accumulated roughly two hours of “upside down/in-the-cradle” running time on my Mikado … forward, reverse, and at varying speeds.  The crank pins have remained in place throughout.  However, I did have several incidents where the loco would suddenly operate erratically by stalling/hesitating/speeding back up.  It would occasionally stop entirely, in which case I could either change DC direction, or jostle the drivers with a finger, and it would resume operation.

A new 58731 decoder and speaker arrived, so I’m ready to start the DCC/sound install.  I’m a bit hesitant, considering the (admittedly rare) running glitches noted above.  I guess I’ll get on with it, but there’s this nagging feeling that this Mikado will be a hit-&-miss DCC runner.

[Mark5]

I would solve any running problems in DC before tackling DCC.

[peteski]

I would solve any running problems in DC before tackling DCC.

Yes, this loco's design is such that if all is well with the mechanism it shroud operate very smoothly.  If there are glitches then it is a pretty good indication that something is "off" and needs to be investigated.

[Dwight in Toronto]

I agree that acceptable baseline running on DC is a prerequisite prior to DCC upgrading. 
So, rather than hastily jump into the install, I spent more time poking, prodding and familiarizing myself with other aspects of the Mikado mechanism.

My explorations have me thinking that the two motor contact strips that rub against their  internal frame sides are the most suspect culprits for the shoddy occurrences.  Multimeter testing revealed that there was flawless continuity everywhere between drawbar, wheels, and their respective frame halves.  However, the audible signal became rather sketchy/hit-&-miss when holding one probe on the motor commutator caps, and moving the other probe amongst those same pickup points. 

I wanted to examine the motor separately, so I removed the plastic “motor cage” retaining clip from the top of the mechanism.  I thought that the motor might slip up-&-out, but no … the frame halves are too snugly wrapped around each side of the motor.

So I next removed the two nuts & bolts that secure the frame halves, thinking that maybe I could pry the frame apart just enough to extract the motor from the top.  But it was apparent that the lower mech pistons, rods and whatnot were contorting in a way that was suggesting that any further venturing down that path was not likely to end well.  So I hastily replaced the frame bolts and motor cage, humbly accepting defeat on that front.

I flipped the mech over and removed the two screws and driver wheel retaining plate, simply to have a look.  After withdrawing and studying a couple of driver/axle assemblies, I put everything back together.

I think all I can do at this point is pry out the two motor cap conduction strips (which have to be exposed and isolated from the frame anyway, in order to connect the orange & grey wires), directly connect them to my DC power supply, and accumulate a bit more running time.  If the higgidly-piggedly erratic operation returns, then I’ll know that it’s a motor problem (dirty brushes or commutator or some such). 

My gut feel is that the motor proper is likely fine, and that hard wiring the track power and motor leads should deliver superior operation on DCC.  I’ll report back on how it goes.

[dangerboy81]

With Dwight's encouragement, I thought I would share this video here in his thread. I have done the install he is looking into doing, perhaps on a newer run model, I don't know how they may differ, maybe it's the same, but I documented what I did. I'm no expert that's for sure, but I get by. There is probably a better way to do this install, but this is what I figured out as I went along.
I must say you guys are a huge help with this kind of thing. Anytime I am about to do a Loksound install in something new, I check the list of installs in the DCC forum to see what I may be up against.