Tramps Modifications

Very interesting Tramp. Anxious to see how it turns out.

So today was the day I finally progressed with my spencer project,

My initial idea was to put radio controlled gear into spencer, so I could use a handset to control him. Unfortunately my previous attempt failed, I had trouble with the controller scaling the out put which didn't give me much control - it should have been proportional, but was more like an on off switch, also to fit all the components in, I had to use the tender and the first coach which was far from ideal as it put the weight to far back in the rake. Anyway, today I dusted off the project and here are my results,

Before I post the pictures I'll tell you, this isn't finished yet - but I still wanted to share

Spencer, almost standard looking eh? (Apart from the power cables to the tender)




Here's another extra addition, it's the speed control switch,



So, what's in the tender?





We have the battery, a 2s lipo (7.4v) a speed controller( top) and a 'servo tester' which selects the speed.

How it works,
Well, the switch on the engine is redundant in terms of the electrical system, although it still engaged/disengaged the drive cogs, the electronic speed controller has its own switch (that needs mounting), you switch on the esc switch and then dial in the speed in the dial on the 'servo tester', this can be forward or reverse, and from virtually no speed to full speed,

Here's a video of the bench test





There is still a fair bit of work left to do, the in/off switch needs mounting, I need to be able to secure the tender top to the base and I need try it!

I hope this has kept you entertained for the last 5 minutes as I've had to rewrite it x3 times due to my phone loosing the content!

Any feedback is appreciated,

Thanks
Luke

That is fabulous work Tramp. Amazing you can get all of that into the tender. Looks to be mighty fast. Do you think he would stay on the rail at full speed? Looks to me like you will have to be repairing a lot of holes in the wall.

Thanks super,

I'll be honest, after my first failed attempt it was quite clear that full speed was too fast! I needed to be able to 'dial it back' as it just shot off the rails at the first sight of a corner,. I suppose it didn't help that I had a receiver for the radio gear and a much larger speed controller, mounted in the tender and first carriage, but still, it was too fast to be fun!

I've been considering the next step for a while, I was going to just put the battery pack in the tender and keep using the original switch on the engine, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised I would struggle with the speed, hopefully with the speed control dial it should be easy enough to set up a nice average speed, and then with trial and error, turn it up to the fastest achieveable, this should be good if we make a twisty line, or if we decide to load spencer up with carriages, we should be able to tailor the speed to suit,

It's good really, Gordon used to be the flagship of our fleet but it's quite clear that Spencer will be the fastest now, exactly how it should be!

Boy that is fast lol!

I can see the traction tyres exploding in a cloud of smoke as though Jeremy Clarkson was driving it

To good to be true!

Tramp are you uprating the motor too in order to cope with the higher voltage? It would be a shame to do all this work only to burn the standard motor out

Amazing! Perhaps you could revisit the rc idea again with gear from a small helicopter.

(07-21-2015, 10:56 PM)Nigels Wrote: Boy that is fast lol!

I can see the traction tyres exploding in a cloud of smoke as though Jeremy Clarkson was driving it

Haha, time will tell! although I hope not I'd hate to have to wear safety specs every time the trains came out!

(07-22-2015, 01:12 AM)ROCKINATOR Wrote: To good to be true!

Thanks, it's a nice mod but it certainly isn't perfect,I wish I was tidier with my projects but it all ends up being a little rough and ready,

(07-22-2015, 08:05 AM)Nigels Wrote: Tramp are you uprating the motor too in order to cope with the higher voltage? It would be a shame to do all this work only to burn the standard motor out

I'm not worried about burning out the motor, if I do I'll just replace it for another, I have a bag full of old removed motors - to be honest after it's been running near full speed you do get quite an electrical/scalectrix(slot car) smell from it. Another reason I don't want to upgrade it is the speed controller, it was the cheapest smallest electronic speed controller I could find, unfortunately that means it can't switch high currents, if I was running a fast motor I'd probably burn out the controller as it would draw too much current through it,

(07-22-2015, 10:24 AM)Ucwepn Wrote: Amazing! Perhaps you could revisit the rc idea again with gear from a small helicopter.

Yeah, I do have an RC helicopter laying around which is on its last legs - which I did consider canniblising, but I was put off by the fact that the small helis don't have modular components. the receiver is part of the speed controller on the same printed circuit board, so I wouldn't know which bit was which although I could probably work it out if I had a poke around, also the controller would be set up for a tiny motor that I didn't know the current rating of ( so I didn't know if it would be man enough to run the standard silver can motor) I'd be worried about cooking the speed controller, although, it isn't unfeasable! Finally, it has its own battery pack, this is 3.7v, it would be fast, granted but maybe not fast enough?

So...... Here's a little video I knocked together today,



I also mounted the on off switch in the tender and added a little ballast in the engine,