Cooling Fan

[Smoke Stack Lightnin']

I purchased an older NOS Lionel GP7 with sound card (no smoke unit) which shuts down when it heats up.  Hopefully, this is a safty feature engineered into the circuitry!  Relative to the weight of the consist and the temperature outside, this has happened in as little as 10 minutes.  Oddy enough, the body design is air tight.  The hood exhaust fans are solid and even the four ventilation screens are solid strips of clear plastic with a screen mesh design on them.  These fake screens snap into place so for starters I've popped them out and will replace them with ummm...real screen!  The 3 heat sinks mounted to the upper boad get extremely hot.  Can anyone suggest a small fan unit that even I could wire to the inside of the shell to circulate some air?  Not sure if this will interfere with the sound board or not.  Any other thoughts?

Thanks,

Stack

[Capt Bob Johnson]

Radio Shack has a mini fan for 12v.  it looks just like the fan Aristocraft uses on the train engineer and the 10 A controller!   Cheap too!

[Anonymous]

Can you get some sort of heat sink in there also?

[spikejones52002]

Lionel runs on up to 24 VAC. So wire two fans in series. Always have the fans blowing out and never point a fan at the electronics. That will deposit a dirt coating on the electronics and quickly defeat the cooling effect.

[Smoke Stack Lightnin']

I was hoping Radio Shack would have something.  I could go with the 2, 12 VAC units.  Would amps be a concern?  These would be working off track power, so would they work if track power was less than 12 VAC?  There are 3, relatively large heat sinks integrated into the electronics, which would be beyond my capabilities to re-arrange or install.  The fans sound economical so I guess I should experiment.  Good advice about not aiming towards the electonics, cause that is where I would have!

Thanks,

Stack

[spikejones52002]

The fan should draw very little power. They will also start to run at a very low voltage. I suspect the initial start voltage of the locomotive will be close.

Yes you want to draw the heat up and out. Hopefully there are several holes in the frame/base to let air in easly. You need air movement and not just creating a vacumn.

Good luck and have fun

[Smoke Stack Lightnin']

Thanks.  It would be cool to replace the solid molded hood fans with the radio shack fans!  It wouldn't look to proto, but I'd bet she'd be one content GP7!  I was wondering if I could find the larger o-gauge fans (the ones that have turning fan blades) and configure those in to the picture.  Next I could put in a thermo switch (talk about proto!).

Thanks Guys,

Stack

[rpc7271]

You can buy a small 12 volt fan at Radio Shack. The old cooling fans that they used to use on Pentium I CPUs is the same size if you can find one. They both work.

[Smoke Stack Lightnin']

Hopefully I will be able to check out Radio Shack this weekend.  I'll end up finishing the cooling system just in time for the cold weather season  

Stack

[S&G Rute of the Silver River]

Look ahead its olny six months till the sun returns.