I’ve got problems getting my Walthers American Crane to run decently. The worm gear that meshes with the gear on the axle on the front truck pulls the truck up into the bottom of the underframe.
Does anyone have any experience with these?
jeff white
alma, IL
Yup,mine ran like old school brass. Grinding noise,binding gears and jerky. Still like it.
Haven't encountered a fix to this problem.
Surely,on MR's wonderful forum. There sits quietly a electro/mechanical wizard pondering this very same problem.
Patrick
Fear an Ignorant Man more than a Lion- Turkish proverb
Modeling an ficticious HO scale intergrated Scrap Yard & Steel Mill Melt Shop.
Southland Industrial Railway or S.I.R for short. Enterchanging with Norfolk Southern.
JWhite"Does anyone have any tips on making the Walthers American Crane run well?".
I have Walthers American derrick, but mine is the unpowered version...
...but it runs very nicely behind (or in front of) any of my locomotives.NWSL's Stanton drive (scroll down to section 2-6) might be an option: the derrick uses trucks with a 5'6" wheelbase, while the shortest available Stanton, #1210, is 6'6". This would at least require modification to either the derrick's underbody or to the truck mounting points.If you contact Dave at NWSL, I'm sure that he'd be able to tell you if that Stanton drive could be used (or not).
Wayne
1. Make sure the pick-up wires to the trucks are not interfering with the gears.
2. The center screw of the trucks need to be loose enough to allow the gears to self center or the gears will bind.
3. The worm gear needs to be lubricated to slide smoothly on the next gear. I use ATF, very slippery and plastics compatible.
Lee
Thanks. The wire was interfering with the gear. I held it in place with a drop of epoxy.
Going to lube it up and put it back together.
Jeff White
Alma, IL
An alternate idea: I powered up this TMI (now Tichy?) MOW setup using one motor from a 2 motor Bachmann Spectrum 44 tonner. The motor is in the tool car, built from a TMI flat, scratchbuilt shed and boom support. I used old time (MDC) passenger trucks that closely match the 44 tonner truck's wheelbase, figuring the home shops built the car from scrapped equipment.
Here's a worm's eye view of the setup. The tool car has all wheel electrical pick up, plus 4 of the 8 on the crane are hard wired to the circuit. Note drawbar, not couplers between the two. Weight was added to the crane also for electrical and tracking stability. I haven't had any of the typical Spectrum gear splitting on this unit, so far. But another small mechanism could be similarly hidden in a tool car and taken out of the crane. I built this not long before the Walthers crane became available. Dan
Here's a worm's eye view of the setup. The tool car has all wheel electrical pick up, plus 4 of the 8 on the crane are hard wired to the circuit. Note drawbar, not couplers between the two. Weight was added to the crane also for electrical and tracking stability.
I haven't had any of the typical Spectrum gear splitting on this unit, so far. But another small mechanism could be similarly hidden in a tool car and taken out of the crane. I built this not long before the Walthers crane became available. Dan