Rebuilding old Bachmann U36B Part 3 The Body

Rebuilding old Bachmann U36B Part 3 The Body

Getting ready to rebuild the body

Now that the motor and frame are working, we can turn our attention to the body.  If you remember the photo of the original, this is what we were working with:

Yes, that is dried pottery clay that was used for weathering.  In addition to being actually weathered and beaten up thoroughly, this locomotive was in rough shape.  But, as a testament to it's actual toughness, it's really starting to turn into something extra special...

First thing I did with this shell was put it in the icky box, as we call the 5 gallon tub of 8.7% pine oil.  If you plan to make your own icky box, make sure it has a decent lid and then throw a bath towel over it to keep the smell of pine contained to the box.  I generally have a number a future projects in the box for long periods of time.

Since there have been so many beginners shut down on various forums recently, I decided to pull this project out and do this tutorial.  Like I said before, this is a great place to learn and many of you have these locomotives from your very first train set.  So let's get that paint off:

You can see that I removed the handrails, actually just broke them off.  They were in bad shape and I said we'd make our own handrails anyways.

I'm going to install a homemade anti-climber.  It's not going to look prototype in any way, but it won't stand out that much and it will give a lot of structural strength to the front end.  I'm going to use some plastruct channel that cost about a $1 for enough to do around 10 locomotives.

Another thing that I can't say enough is that you must use the correct glue.  When joining plastics, especially different kinds to each other there are 2 choices.  Super Glue or Epoxy.  Do not use Testor's Orange Tube glue to join different kinds of plastic, it doesn't work - that glue is for joining the same plastics to each other.

So I sanded the pilot flat using my combination belt and disk sander from Harbor Freight and filed the L channels just a bit and joined them with a bit of super glue.  If I needed more working time, epoxy would have been the way to go.

Don't worry about measuring them....

Now I can insert my short rant about tools from Harbor Freight.  A lot of them get terrible reviews because a guy spends $50 on a tool and tries to mill hardened steel or aluminum and it fails.  I have several machines from there and I use them on model trains which generally are plastics that sand, drill and shape nicely.....

So using the disc sander I just shaped the anti-climber using my Mark I eyeball.

I'm not doing any putty work or filling anything.  I'm also not doing wire grab irons or other details.  This is supposed to be an easy build, not a super detail build.  Next I did a super light coat of fast drying white primer and put the heat lamp on it.  In 15 minutes it was ready to start painting.

I spray painted the cab just because that red takes a while to bake and dry.  I airbrushed the satin black section with some acrylic paint I got at walmart for $3.  That little can will last a couple years.  I cut the acrylic with about 2/3 91% alcohol and I spray at 100psi.  Some guys paint at 10psi, others at 25, but I paint at 100psi because I can.  That doesn't mean you should.

While the cab is baking, and after about 45 minutes of drying time on the black, I got started on the masking.

This is a super simple paint scheme, just red and black.  The trick to masking is to put on a TV show that you can binge watch while cutting small strips of tape and masking your project.  You don't need to measure, just cut small pieces and start applying the tape.  In a short time, everything is masked.

Check this out:  just some small random sized strips stuck everywhere I wanted to avoid paint.  I didn't really measure, but I did use my steel ruler to cut some straight lines to save tape.  I use tape from the auto parts store because it does a much better job.  There is a green and an orange tape for detail work that does very well.  There are 2 kinds of blue tape and one of them is super thin and doesn't stick very well.  Beware large sections of green or orange tape because it can pull the paint off from underneath it.

Now let's paint some Rustoleum Sunburst Red from a can that was about $6.  I cut it with 2/3 lacquer thinner and again do 100psi.  Lacquer thinner is one of the best secrets to learn in airbrushing.

The cab gets a silver roof and then to bake it under a heat lamp for a few hours.  This red I'll also leave overnight just to make sure.

The next day, the tape comes off and we can do a little flat black work on the grills:

And we can start doing a bit of my favorite 1 color weathering, which I'll go into detail later....

Rebuilding old Bachmann U36B Part 2 Pancake Motor

Rebuilding old Bachmann U36B Part 2 Pancake Motor

Putting it back together

Let's finish up those wheels.... so cut the old traction tires off.  I'm assuming you found traction tires on ebay and got a bag full, or you got some bullfrog snot.  I'm not going to talk about bullfrog snot in this rebuild, but somewhere down the line we'll get to it.  A word of warning - bullfrog snot is expensive and if it gets cold at all it is forever ruined.  I spent about $30 for a tiny jar and it came already ruined and there is absolutely no returns.  I'd like to get some to use on strange wheel sizes for old steam engines, but it's super expensive to risk ordering it.

Putting on the new tires is really easy.  Once they're on, just run a small screw driver around the inside of them to make sure they're all flattened out.

But WAIT!!! I was going to do just a bit of weathering...sort of.

I put some of this liquid graphite into a small testors bottle and use it to paint the wheels so they look just a bit more real....it dries pretty fast and looks decent....

I'll polish the surfaces again when dry and then put the traction tires on...

OK, more wheels later.... for now let's take a look at those electrical connections.... 1 of them broke...

A little rosin flux and some solder and then a hit with the polishing wheel and we are back....

Let's start getting that motor back together...

Here it is cleaned and ready above and here below is where I skip a couple steps and put it back together...the mystery is in the gears - all the little gears are on the inside if you a looking at it this way:

Look how clean those gears are.  Here they are from the top:

OK traction tires on and wheelsets back in:

HERE COMES THE PART WHERE WE DECIDE WHAT TYPE OF LUBRICANT GOES ON THESE GEARS...I use this bearing grease which is lithium, this one can has lasted me years and it looks like I've hardly used any.  I've never had a problem with it, none of my gears have been attacked by it and it doesn't spread like oil does.  One note is that is does take a bit of warming up sometimes if it's cold.  You barely need any.

A tiny screwdriver lets me apply it:

And we got a spot on one wheel to clean, but otherwise everything looks good.

Now is the time to get real careful - we're going to put the brushes and springs back.  If you drop a brush or spring, it will be gone forever, you'll never find it unless you no longer need it.  So be extra careful here.

Put the brushes in and then do 1 spring at a time.

See this spring?  If you drop it, it's gone.  It is possible to buy springs this small from certain manufacturers like Templeman  Co., but they still have to be trimmed, so let's try not to lose it:

Gently place the spring in its collar:

Now carefully position the frame and connect the lead:

How do you know if you have connected the correct lead to the correct post?

Here is the rule:
When a locomotive is on the track and you give it some power, the locomotive should move forward with the right hand side (aka engineer's side) on the right hand rail.

In other words, if your direction arrow is pointing right, your locomotive is facing right, then it moves right when you give it some power.

If your locomotive goes backwards, switch the 2 wires around.  It can be more complicated, but don't make it more complicated.

Check out how that graphite paint worked, not bad and most important - easy to do.

An now a word about the sideframes...

I don't like these sideframes at all.  These are really old and look terrible.  Bachmann came out with much better sideframes later and the good news is that they fit.  I do have some nicer ones, but what I'm hoping to get is the sideframes from the B23-7.  I've tested them on these locomotives and they fit.  The FB-2 sideframes are a big improvement, prototype or not, I like those FB-2 frames from the B23-7 for such a cheap rebuild.  As of February 2017, the Bachmann parts catalog has some old Blomberg sideframes that are much nicer looking for under $5, but they will likely be gone in the near future.

Let's get it back together and test it.  Since I know it's going to work, I'm going to put on some Bachmann E-Z Mate Over Shank couplers and guess (correctly) that they will line up with the height guage:

As you can see, I used the couple pocket and screw but added a tiny washer.  If you don't have a tiny washer, make a simple plate with a hole in it to keep the coupler in place.  Something that works is any thin plastic.  You know how lots of things come in clear plastic blister packs?  That stuff you use to make cheap windows for your buildings?  Yes, that stuff will work.

Now lets check the height:

OK, the plastic frame is bent and the coupler is low.  A bend with a pliers takes care of that problem.  But what should you do if you don't have any over shank couplers?  You can cut the coupler pockets off and mount them to the body instead.  We'll do that to a TYCO locomotive do the road a bit.... now let's check again:

And the other side:

Time for the test track.....

In the next part we'll start looking at the body....

Rebuilding old Bachmann U36B Part 1 Pancake Motor

Rebuilding old Bachmann U36B Part 1 Pancake Motor

A heavy rebuild project of an old Bachmann Locomotive in HO Scale

I'm going to go over some old topics and some new in this series.  First off I want to answer the common objection of "why rebuild this - it's just junk."

Many of you started out with a Bachmann, Tyco or Life-Like trainset and still have one of these pancake motor locomotives.  For a lot of you they hold a great deal of sentimental value.  I started with an AHM GP18 and I still have it and it still runs.  I'll always hold my first locomotive in the highest place among my trains.

Are these 40 year locomotives junk?  The short answer is absolutely not.  They were built for kids who beat the crap out their trains and ran them at full power all the time.  Too many modelers get this high-brow attitude and just say you should junk them or toss them.

The reality is that if they were junk then there wouldn't be hundreds of them for sale on ebay on any given day that still run.  They can be caked with hairballs and dirt, but still have signs of life in them.  And they are CHEAP to get.  Ask yourself how comfortable you would be taking the hacksaw to your $300 locomotive?

I'm starting this series with Bachmann, which means it will also apply to old Life-Like.  The mechanism in these trains is technology that is accessible to everyone.  They're the simplest trains to really practice on.  A testament to the reliability of the pancake motor is the fact that it's the same motor slot car racers use today.

If you ever have a failure so catastrophic that you just don't know what to do, find you friends who are into slot car racing and ask them to check it out for you.  The whole idea here is that any problem or damage you find can be fixed.  We're going to fix everything and not junk anything.

This includes cracked gears.  If we find broken or cracked gears, we're going to replace them with easily found miniature robot gears.

We're going to strip the old paint and fabricate new handrails.  We're going to make just a few modifications to the body, but we ARE NOT going to go real heavy in super detailing.  Just a few details here and there to make a decent looking fully operational locomotive that could appear in photos looking good from several feet away.

The plan is to do this U36B first, then we'll move up to an AHM GP18, then we'll probably create a dual motor TYCO Super 630.  Eventually we'll get to blue box Athearn and Proto 2000 Life-Like.

This is all practice so that someday you'll feel comfortable taking on more complex and expensive project.

We're going to do a 1 color simple weathering with a paint brush that I think you'll really like.  Here is what we're starting with....

So, right now I've been soaking the shell in 8% pine oil for a couple weeks to remove the tough paint job. The pine oil has done a decent job and you'll see some pix of that shortly.

Step 1 then is disassembly.  Carefully start taking everything apart with care not to lose any parts.  My U36B was one of the dirtiest locomotives I've ever found.

As you can see, the wiring is nice and heavy and in decent shape.  We're going to keep the circuit board.  Next I hooked up some alligator clips to check if there was life in the motor....

The motor did turn a bit and after a short time was spinning.  Even if there is no life at all, we can still fix it.

The slippery plastic can often crumble.  If that happens, usually super glue can be used to make some decent welds, but other glues can really wreck things, so SUPER GLUE ONLY for now.  So far everything seems ok.... lets remove the motor from the frame....sideframes come off first, and be careful not to break them.

OK, looks dirty, grimy, full of hariballs and the traction tires are shot...carefully start removing the gears and wheelsets...

Needs cleaning bad....  rear truck is for power pickup, looks like it's just dirty and nothing is really broken...

Motor Disassembly

Yes you can totally take the motor apart and it will not ruin the magnets.  Ask any slot car racer.  Replacement magnets that are much stronger are actually out there if you must, but I'm pretty sure we'll be just fine.  No need here to take out the magnets, but we can if we need to....

With a soft toothbrush and a small pan of Dawn dish soap we can clean everything.  Don't lose any parts down the sink.  Don't wash the motor, but do carefully clean it just a bit, then you can polish it with a soft metal wire wheel on your dremel.  Also, those little springs and the tiny motor brushes are things you don't want to lose or you'll be searching ebay to buy some new ones.  On the motor housing side with the magnets are 2 metal collars, leave them where they are.  You will need to clean the grease and hair out the posts that hold the gears in place.

TAKE PICTURES OF EVERYTHING BEFORE YOU TAKE IT APART.  That's how you'll be able to put it back together.  After a while it becomes second nature and you'll know this motor inside and out.

Don't break any tiny wires on the motor core, but do polish it with the soft wire wheel.  Remember that the wire wheel with the copper colored shaft is the stiff wheel and will shred this motor core in 2 seconds, so only use the soft wire....

Next we're going to take a look at the wheelsets... they need new traction tires, which I got on ebay, a bag full for around $2. The wheels need polishing, but again, the copper colored shaft wheel will actually take the plating off the wheels, so soft wire only.

If the gears are cracked, which these aren't, you can REPLACE them with gears easily found on ebay, just search for "58 kinds of small gears" - that bag has pretty much any gear you need.  They are little wider, which makes them stronger.

All the gears are washed with a toothbrush and dish soap.  Anything on this locomotive can be washed with dish soap if you are careful.

OK the wheels need work.... in the next part we'll fix them up...

Bachmann Life Like replacement gears

Bachmann Life Like replacement gears

Mystery Solved!!

This isn't new news, and the link is going to expire, but I will post another because these guys never run out of gears and they aren't the only sellers.

Here is a link from Feb 17:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/58-kinds-Plastic-gear-Motor-Gear-Technology-Small-Production-DIY-Accessories-Hot-/261832973793?hash=item3cf6761de1:g:k1QAAOSwm8VUwhC5



Here's the news you guys really want:

Bachmann and Life Like old gears that are broken or cracked are NOT unique or special in any way.  The sizes are standard and the holes are also standard.  The photo about shows a selection of replacement gears that can be used to repair those 1970's and 1980's locomotives.

I've found that using the thickest gear possible provides the best results.  Sometimes you need to use 2 gears together to get the right combination.

ALPS MD 1000 Printer

The ALPS MD-1000 Printer

White Decals Printed Successfully

I finally got my ALPS MD 1000 Printer to do exactly what I wanted... print tiny white decals.  Yes, it worked.  I'd almost given up hope, but on January 31st, 2017 I successfully printed half a sheet of tiny 4 pt. lettering on clear decal paper.

I tested the decals on a couple locomotives that needed some lettering.  If done quickly, the decals can be applied WITHOUT using a decal sealer on the paper.  They will work.  But, then I tried doing about 20 of them at one time.  The decals that stayed in the water and ammonia mix that I use did have some breakage and some of the letters actually separated from the paper.

The simple fix is to use decal sealer on the sheet like I do for all the other decals I use.

Here's is what you need to know if you want to get an ALPS MD 1000 working.

1.  You will need an old computer running Windows XP.  There is no exception to that rule at all and I tried everything.  Also, it's best if you use SP2 or lower.  I had trouble with SP3, but did manage.

2.  The cartridge you will need is the SCWH which means special color white.  It's usually used for making other colors opaque when set down first and printed over with another color.

3.  The mode used is SPOT COLOR SINGLE COLOR WHITE ONLY.

4.  THE PRINTER IS INSTALLED WITH 2 DRIVERS, MAKE SURE TO USE THE REGULAR PRINTER, AND NOT THE MS VERSION.  YOU HAVE TO SELECT IT EACH TIME YOU PRINT!!

5.  There is a mode that I experimented with where you hit the feed button, print one color and then the paper backs up to the beginning again and allows you to print again, might be useful for making yellow decals printed over the white.

I use an old program I got 17 years ago called Freehand.  It was made for Windows XP and is perfect for lettering.