Repowering older brass diesels

[Anonymous]

i bought a Brass alco SD40 a few months ago, but when i ran it. I found that it was extremly slow and loud. i opened it up and found that the motor was an open frame motor that powers a set tower drives. I lubed it and tried to give it some tlc, but still sounded the same. Has anyone else tried to repower these locomotives? I would like to upgrade it with a better drive system, (replaceing the tower drives and motor) Any ideas how i could do this?

[Anonymous]

I have some old Athearm steam locomotives that I regeared and found a replacement gear box from Northwest Short Line. Sorry I don't have experience remotoring Alco models, so I can't tell you which gear boxes to use. You can e-mail N.W.S.L. ( [e-mail] ) and ask if they have gear boxes for your model, but you may need to measure the axle diameter, gear ratio and such first.

[orsonroy]

While you CAN repower the engine fairly easily (can motor with a silicone caulk mount, new NWSL universals, and maybe a quick gear tuneup), you need to ask yourself if it's worth it. Brass is primarily a collectable item, rather than a running item. Will you be able to sell the engine as-is and turn around and buy a decent Kato SD-40? (which will run lightyears better without any work)

[Don Gibson]

QUOTE: Originally posted by webrer

i bought a Brass alco SD40 a few months ago, but when i ran it. I found that it was extremly slow and loud. i opened it up and found that the motor was an open frame motor that powers a set tower drives. I lubed it and tried to give it some tlc, but still sounded the same. Has anyone else tried to repower these locomotives? I would like to upgrade it with a better drive system, (replaceing the tower drives and motor) Any ideas how i could do this?

ALCO Imported brass diesels were made by Kumata (KMT) using a lousy 1 amp motor and noisy tower gears. They were 'Balky'. A better motor is a must, but the tower gear's are what is noisy. Replacing the gears in the tower with brass NWSL wont speed things up any.

ALCO brass desel's bring $90 -$100. Sell them and buy the KATO SD40, or combine the ALCO shell with the KATO chassis inside. At one time CHALLENGER had SAMHONGSA make tower gear and wheel replacement's (long gone) but they cost $55 - $70, lus installation. I loaded up and replaced all my ALCO working parts.

No matter how you slice it, you'll spend $100.

[Anonymous]

Don't have a ALCO Model SD40, I'm running Kato, ( a friend repowered his with OMI ) but I had the same problem with the ALCO Alco's. Many of the models are not available yet in plastic so I "can motored" those, greased the worm gears, and changed the sprocket so they crawled, as any switcher would. The noise, I live with it. The Atlas C628, C630, RS11, S2, S3, and S4, series can be modified to be real SP and they run well. Do not have the new RSD15 but my two brass ones run good. The worst of the worst is the Alco C855a & B set.....real dogs. Display models I guess. My favorites are the RSD12 and RS32.

[nfmisso]

See the most recent two issues of Railroad Model Craftsman. Article about repowering an ALCO models RSD15 using Atlas RSD4/5 components.