Just to put a close to this, the motor and wheel arrived, and because I failed to note the relative position of the red/blk wires soldered to the motor, it was a 50/50 crap shoot as to whether it would go forward or backward when I advanced the speed knob at the first power-up …. I got lucky!! The new wheel went on smoothly and now has a straight screw holding the linkage gizmo to the wheel boss. Reinstalled the board (and everything else) and gave it a quick run – everything works! Sound, lights, back-n-forth, talking stuff – all of it!
But the smoke was kind of anemic. So I popped the top on the smoker – yep, crispy critter stuff inside. Did a quick read on OGR to see what others have been using, and although some pretty nifty ideas are being thrown around, I settled for the fiberglass pipe wrap that GRJ uses – it was cheap and I had it in hand same day! I crammed the glass wool into the little smoker and reassembled everything (again) and gave it another run – smokes great now. Finally … Done!
Whoops! Forgot to reinstall my add-on TVS diode I removed temporarily, guess I gotta open it up again!
It’s a cute little switcher now, and is in good shape cosmetically. But you can stick a fork in me, cuz I’m done on this one! Notwithstanding all that, I had a lot of fun, and fortunately can still laugh at my goofy mistakes!
George
