Has anyone tried one of these conversions? You take a Lima pancake motor and replace what looks like the armature. Now featured at intercity models
Chris
"Chris" wrote
No, but Hornby have done a similar upgrade with their pancake motor powered locos, and that is a serious improvement when coupled with their additional pick-ups. Not up to the best in quality, but a worthwhile improvement.
John.
Pity that you can't just replace the armature in converting the Hornby motor though.
Chris
Funny you should ask, but I just put one of these in a Lima power car yesterday. The conversion is very simple to carry out and the result depends on where you started from! There are a vast range of performances from Lima motors in my experience. Some are dire ranging through to the just about acceptable. The ModelTorque motor is a vast improvement over a poor Lima motor but the improvements become more marginal if you a lucky enough to have a reasonably good runner. The drive is still noisy but the slow speed control is improved.
I am using DCC with mine and I am not convinced that I have got the best match between the decoder and the motor. I have used a Lenz Gold in the HST and a 1024 in a Lima bubblecar that also has a ModelTorque in, and I am not really satisfied with the performance of either. Does anyone else have experience of these motors under DCC?
ROB
Are you sure about that John? I thought Hornby just upgraded the motor to five poles whereas the ModelTorque unit includes the magnetic equivalent of a "fluid flywheel" to give continuously variable gearing.
(kim)
"kim" wrote
Hornby upgraded to 5-pole armatures and added additional pick-ups, that's all I claimed.
Anyway, what's a fluid flywheel?
John.
It's a clutch in which there is no direct physical connection between the input and output drive shats. It relies on the inertia of a spinning body of oil to gradually transfer power from the input to the output drive shaft. ModelTorque employ rotating magnets to achieve much the same effect.
(kim)
"kim" wrote
So it's effectively the same as a torque converter?
John.
Yes.... except I'm pretty sure that the torque converters are a separate product. The Lima pancake replacements are just a motor.
Yup. just checked... see :
Chris, I have fitted one of these motors to a Lima DMU. It certainly runs smoother, but I there are two things I am not entirely happy with:
I'd rather have a slower speed motor with more slow speed control.
My controllers are from KPC, and do not give me any similar problems with any other locos.
There's probably not much that more that could be done to a Lima motor-bogie without replacing all the gearing. The ModelTorque motor is no doubt better than the Lima original, but higher gearing and a flywheel would be needed to improve slow running to any degree. That can't be achieved with the motor mounted on the bogie.
Adrian
Thanks for all the feedback think I will go into the shop when down in Cornwall and see if they have demo conversion to see how it is.
Chris
I am using TCS decoders on my ModelTorque motors. My motors are the later type where the motor gearwheel directly drives the Lima gears. The earlier version (which I also used, but returned for swap) had an extra armature shaft which fitted in the Lima bearings and the ModelTorque motor ran on this inside the Lima motor housing. Not a very good arangement due to friction and gave poor performance. With regards DCC, I found that the diode circuit supplied with the motors MUST be fitted in series with the motor because the starting voltage output of the decoder couldn't be dropped low enough to give a sensible starting speed - I suspect this is a problem you are having. You will also need to operate them on 128 speed steps. These are the only motors I have ever seen where you can actually see the motor jump and hear the speed ramping of the decoder adjusting the speed of the motor. The thing you have to remember about these motors is that they are designed for CD players and therefore are very responsive and have very low power requirements, quite a bit lower than a normal model loco motor, therefore, you need to drop the voltage to it. Two back-to-back diodes will drop the voltage by about 1.5V which is enough to solve the problem. I am very happy with mine having fitted them to Lima class 47's.
Graham Plowman
John,
ModelTorque produce two products, one of which is the 'fluid flywheel' which you refer to. The other is a replacement CD player motor (with attached retaining plate) which fits inside the motor housing of a Lima motor, replacing the entire inner parts (armature, magnets, brushes and brush retaining plate).
Graham Plowman
Paul,
Re:
but I there are two things I am not entirely happy with:
seems to need quite a bit of power to start the motor rolling and then a fraction more of turn on the controller and you are travelling at a rapid rate. Get the controller right and slow speed motion is quite smooth.
any other locos.
Not being familiar with the KPC controllers, I assume they are feedback ? In that case, the ModelTorque motors have similar operating characteristics as Portescap motors where the responsiveness of the motor is such that it attempts to cancel out the controller feedback. A case of not using these motors on feedback controllers. I should add that the ModelTorque motors are standard motors with brushes. They are NOT of the same type as Portescap.
Graham Plowman
I think you may
Graham, Thanks for the feedback (no pun intended). Indeed the KPC controllers I an using are feedback controllers. I have another one which is non-feedback in the cupboard. I'll switch it for one of the feedback controllers and see what difference it makes to the Modeltorque motor.
"Chris" wrote
Looking at their diddy pictures, it looks to me more like they just take the face-commutator armature and magnet out and stick a standard Mabuchi CD-ROM drive motor into the casing! The six mounting holes and little plastic brush covers are suspiciously similar, with just a mounting plate added to mate with the Lima moulding. Here's a close-up of one:
Most of the CD ones seem to be rated at 6V (though I found they will withstand 12V offload, whizzing furiously, but under load this might provoke a Rapid Heating Zone situation) so you might want to experiment with a limiting diode, or use two and wire them in series for finer control. I'm making some DMU motor bogies out of them at the moment, with the motor mounted flat into a perspex mounting plate fitted inside the Hornby moulding and driving one axle conventionally by Romford gears. It helps that mounted this way they neatly come below window height so you're not restricted to hiding them in the guard's compartment. For this reason one's going in a Dapol railbus too. They might even be man enough for fitting in a steam loco, certainly a small tank should run OK.
On the related subject of upgrading motors - usual disclaimers, but there's a firm on eBay called North Pole Magnets who advertise an upgrade kit for Hornby XO3 motors, which is a replacement silver-coloured magnet block made of neodymium/ceramic/something and a fair bit more magnetic than the standard iron thing. I bought a pack of three for a tenner, which must be good given how hard it is now to find a shop with the remagnetizing gizmo to perk up old motors.
Tony Clarke
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