Hello all! This will be about the restoration of old Varney Super H0 Locomotives (the ones with sprung drivers), starting with a Super Mikado I recently bought on Ebay.
I've only made an account after having stripped the paint, reassembled the mechanism, repainted most of the body, and after returning from being out of town for a week and firing the thing up, just finding out that a coil in the motor was mostly dead and the ball race bearing with a shield on only one side was reversed.
After putting in an new, extremely good ball race bearing, I now know that the motor will be in need of a full rewind before it can even fee spin again, let alone power the heavy cast brass locomotive. If Varney was still around, it would be easy enough to get a new armature for the motor, but it seems that I'll have to remove the resin, rewind the motor completely.
I Just ask that anyone who has done successfully or not share their experience in fixing these motors, as I would like to get this lovely locomotive back in service, better than ever.
Thanks for leaving a comment. It means a lot.
It has been done but wshy not just put in a new motor, that one took too much juice anyway.
Bet it's less the armature and commutator/brushes and more your field magnets.
Make up a stack of good modern NIB magnets and suitable shims, per some of the posts on the topic here over the years, and see what that does.
(NIB magnets should not be cut or filed, hence the use of a suitable shim to get the right stack dimension).
rrebell It has been done but wshy not just put in a new motor, that one took too much juice anyway.
I'd absolutely prefer to, if you could show me where to buy another Varney 7 pole v2 motor?
I would prefer not to put in a new make of motor, as I want to experience the model the way it was intended, so that I can use it to test clutches and refine its suspension and such, as well as my sheer appreciation of the design of this decades old mechanism.
my regards,
Rohan
Overmod Bet it's less the armature and commutator/brushes and more your field magnets. Make up a stack of good modern NIB magnets and suitable shims, per some of the posts on the topic here over the years, and see what that does. (NIB magnets should not be cut or filed, hence the use of a suitable shim to get the right stack dimension).
I tested each coil outside of the motor with my power supply to see for sparks. Considering that the power supply can shoot decently long sparks, I have no doubt that the coils are as dead as a doorknob.
The motor uses a horseshoe shaped magnet, so I added some additional magnets to try and slow it down and give it more torque.
Now that I know that the lack of torque was due to a couple of coils being half-dead, and that it won't run at all now, I have three options:
I get a new coreless motor and just totally remake the drivetrain (which I'd prefer not to do),
Wait for a new Varney V2 motor to show up on eBay or something,
Or, I take what I have and rewind the motor into a wonderful new 7 pole armature motor and get to learn more about these wonderful mechanisms.
Guess which option seems best to me?
I can understand why you want to keep your parts "stock". But I'm not too sure what you mean by "new Varney V2 motor". Are you referring to old new stock? You would still be looking at motors that are over 50 years old. The magnets would probably be very weak and need a refresh.
I would go for a nice, new can motor. The biggest one that would fit.
Simon
"One difference between pessimists and optimists is that while pessimists are more often right, optimists have far more fun."
I encourage him to rewind -- and document the 'journey' here.