I have all nation F units that I converted from DC to DCC. I never bothered to check the stall current draw of the original all nation open frame motor. I just went ahead and replaced them with Pittman can motors that I bought from P&D hobby shop. I installed a TSC Wow sounds 4 amp decoder. Another issue related to DCC is the sintered iron wheels that some all nation diesels use. These wheels will pick up crude like crazy. I was very concerned about the electrical conductivity between these wheels and the track. When running in straight DC current I noticed arcing between the wheels and the track. My track is nickel silver. I polished all the wheels using 600 grit emery paper. This can be done in a lathe, drill press or even an electric hand drill. The original method of electrical pick up on all nation diesel trucks was that only two wheels on each truck where pick up wheels. I added phosphor bronze wipers to all the wheels so that now ALL wheels are pick up wheels. You can get phosphor bronze wheel wipers from Rod Miller. Next, I converted the engines to DCC by installing a sound decoder with “keep-alive” capacitors. These engines now run just as well as an engine with steel wheels. No arcing, no stalling and excellent slow speed performance with sintered wheels.
|
|
