Loinel Mijack gear lubrication & mtc

I'm currently working over my MiJack.  I greased all the gears and even lubed the plastic rollers that traverse the frame.  I also clipped about 1/4" off each of the jaws to make the pickup more reliable, and I tapered the inside of the jaws toward the bottom.  The issue was that it barely would lock on Lionel containers, they're almost 1/4" wider than the MTH ones I have which worked fine.  The jaws opened barely wide  enough to drop over the Lionel trailers as well.  The previous fixes solved all those problems.

 

Next, I worked on the speed issues. You can adjust the various motor speeds by opening up the control and changing the 5 watt resistor values on the board.

 

Since the limiting factor seems to be the jaw clamps as far a voltage is concerned, I got those working well and that decided the voltage, mine runs on 16 volts now.  The traverse was on the slow side because there still is more friction that I'd like with a container hanging from the lift.  I decreased that resistor from 20 ohms to 13 ohms, that made the traverse work as I desired.

 

I have one step left, the wheel drive is too fast and jerky, so I'm going to increase the resistors for those two controls and I hope to be done with the modifications.

See gearbox photos here.

Bad link on your photos page.  I went to North Lima, but I don't see the gear assembly at all.  Here's their complete list.

 

1		Intermodal Crane Control Booth	6SP2741301	$3.50
1		Intermodal Crane Controller w/ harness	6102702023	$4.00
52		Intermodal Crane Controller w/ harness	6102781400	$40.00
1		Intermodal Crane Stone Guard	6SP2741065	$2.00
1		Intermodal Crane Tire & Hub Assy	6SP2741075	$4.00
1		Intermodal Wheel/hub assy (with gears)	6SP2741085	$5.00
1		Maersk Intermodal frame (O27)	6306935017	$18.00
1		Maersk Intermodal frame (O27)	6306919007	$18.00

Great link Susan, those pictures are certainly helpful.  I know I've had mine apart to replace those gears and this undertaking can be quite challenging.  Those gears appear quite often on Ebay.

 

Everyone have a great weekend.

 

Ken

Thanks for the feedback.  I attempted a fix for the links.  Hopefully if anyone has difficulty finding the part they will email me through the website.

In the June/July 2012 issue of OGR magazine page 88, a reader noted Timko's Repair Depot sells the brass version of the gear.

A brass version of some of the gears would be great!  I'll have to check with Frank.

Hi all, 

a little late on this, but I was working on the broken helix gear axle ( lift motor) on the MiJack  I bought a few months ago . I live in the Netherlands so no lionel parts on the corner or anywhere.

I  removed the helix gear from the axle and slid a ( G-scale) LGB 62007 idler gear on it and stuck it with super glue. This gear is made to run just free on a 3mm axle.

The LGB gear has angled tooth especially for worm gears , is very strong and much heavier that that tiny lionel gear.  You only have to cut away a little plastic in the gear case to make room for the wider gear. It runs very smooth and strong now.

Link to the lgb gears: 

 

http://www.amazon.com/Lgb-6200...e-Gear/dp/B000AXFRVO

 

As for the traverse , the motor only makes a few turns to move it left to right so it will always go too fast.

I removed the big motor and single gears , and put in a smaller motor with dubble and much smaller gears from a cheap 12 V transmission kit  so the motor runs faster and the traverse runs slower.

Not so difficult to do because the motor sits on a lose plastic shield inside the traverse box. This part does not need heavy drives , it only moves left-right.

 

So now to work , on the other parts....

What I do not have is the controller box.  No problem, I will make one. The only thing is, I don't know all the values of all the resistors.

Does anyone know them from his own controller ?

It would be a great help.

thanks,

fred

0-scale-nederland

 

 

I am in awe of you people that work on this thing. And modify it!!!

I like the idea of changing the traverse motor to a gear motor.  I changed the resistor in the controller to slow it down, that helped a bunch.  I made a few mods to mine to make it more reliable, there was a previous thread on the MI-Jack where I posted it.  It's in a box right now under a pile, or I'd check what I ended up with for the controller resistors.

The one thing that I couldn't correct is the drive motor speed, it's much too jerky when you position the platform, those should be gear motors as well.

I didn't yet open up the drive motors setup. I'm gonna look into that too, indeed it is also way too rough. If there is any room in it, I 'll try to put a geared set in it and get back with the result.

fred

0-scale-nederland

With mine, that's the top issue now.  I modified the jaws so it would latch properly, changed the resistors so I had better speeds, and used some grease on the gear box so it ran smoother.

 

When you try to position it, it's like a jackrabbit, that's my remaining complaint.

 

So gunrunner, how
Much to make all those mods to mine? 

You should be able to do the stuff I did.  I described them in the other thread.

 

This is the thread.  Lionel Mijack Lubrication

 

 

It was a bit of a PITA to get the gearbox apart as I recall.  I forget the details, but I did get it back together and working well.

BBBBIIIIIIIGGGG PITA

Nice other thread , John. I'm quite new to the forum so I didn't know you already had a thread running.

As for the drive motors, I am beginning to think about trying an all-time adjustable  wound resistor , like the one Fleischmann HO uses for smooth slowing and speeding analog HO trains. That way you could switch directions and than pump up the volume from zero to full and run it smooth..

Just a thought.

Part: fleischmann 6954 , 

fred

0-scale-nederland

Gearbox Photos posted by Susan Deats, very Helpful.

 

See all photos in her post, on this topic.

 

Yes, there is the little devil , sitting in the deep.....

By the way , love your man cave movie , Gary.  An almost impossible wish here in Holland , such a layout ,  because the houses are so small over here.