Subject:
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Re: monorail maintenance?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.trains
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Date:
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Sun, 22 Apr 2007 02:18:34 GMT
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Viewed:
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4140 times
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In lugnet.trains, Felix Greco wrote:
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I’m coming into the monorail world late and have been acquiring track and
parts on Bricklink. I have two motors and both seem to run very slowly. They
really seem to labor going up-hill.
I haven’t run the engines enough to believe I might have burnt them out. All
my metal to metal contacts appear to be clean. My batteries are new. Can
anyone offer me some advice? Are there any steps I can take to clean the
engine and make it more efficient?
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Firstly, how heavy is your train? You’ve got a battery-powered, gear-driven
drive system that doesn’t run very fast under the best conditions, so unless you
strip it down to the bare essentials (one sled, one motor, one battery box, and
just enough lightweight parts to make it look vaguely train-like). I made a
monster 6-wide, brick-built double-cabbed monorail train that uses two battery
boxes (one for the motor, one for the cab running lights) and I eventually gave
up on 9v batteries and dropped some cash on 9.6v NiMH rechargables in a
9v-shaped package. For construction, panels are your best friend, and running
lights off the same battery will definitely shorten its runtime.
Second, what batteries are you using? I was once pointed towards Big Lots
because you can get two 9v alkalines for $0.99, but about every third battery
seemed like it was a dud, and the “good” ones were severely underpowered. If
you really want to get the most powerful batteries, you can buy Lithium (not
Lithium-Ion), but last I checked they ran about $10 each. Brand-name alkalines
are probably going to give you the best bang for your buck out of
non-rechargables, but they’ll still get pricy. Rechargables are nice for going
low-cost, but standard rechargable cells only pack 1.2v compared to an
alkaline’s 1.5v, which means that building a 6-cell “9v” rechargable would
provide a highly insufficient 7.2v of power. Most rechargable manufacturers
actually build them as a 7-cell construction, which boosts that to 8.4v, but
it’s still running a bit light, on top of the fact that to get the extra cell in
there you have to make them all that much smaller, which reduces the mAH rating
of the battery (i.e. it runs out of juice faster). And yes, that means that my
9.6v rechargables will get even less runtime with an 8-cell construction, but
I’m okay with that because I can finally actually see the lights through three
layers of trans-red for two hours minimum (as compared to sorta seeing them for
two minutes tops), and I’m getting about five hours of drive time on a level run
with a monorail train that’s probably around 75% heavier than I ever should have
made it. And there was actually a time where I was entertaining the thought of
buying some ~11v Li-Ion non-standard packs that would have required extensive
rebuilding to accomodate, but that would have run me about $200 just for two
packs and a charger, plus I would have needed to customize some wire adapters to
convert from the 4-stud 9v connector to the polarized nylon clips on the battery
packs. Part of the reason I didn’t was that I was worried about not knowing
just how much power the motor could handle (plus I figured I’d burn the lights
out regularly).
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | monorail maintenance?
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| I'm coming into the monorail world late and have been acquiring track and parts on Bricklink. I have two motors and both seem to run very slowly. They really seem to labor going up-hill. I haven't run the engines enough to believe I might have burnt (...) (18 years ago, 22-Apr-07, to lugnet.trains, lugnet.space, FTX)
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