quote:Originally posted by Rob English:
Be thankful, it used to be YEARS not WEEKS between part re-stockings.
Having participated in other hobbies with those kinds of wait times, consider me thankful.
quote:390 has a headlight.
Right. I'll have to figure out what I'm missing, then. Shouldn't be too hard compared to the rest.
quote:Originally posted by Nachtjager:
I'd spend a few bucks and get a new armature from Hannon, they're well worth the money and the loco will run like a jack rabbit.
The brushes look pretty well worn out as well, but again, go with Hannon on that too. Probably for under $80 you can get everything you need. Might as well replace pickup rollers while you're at it...
I'll do that. In the meantime, I did some cleaning with what I had handy - no mineral spirits around, but I did have some (conductive) Labelle track cleaner to get some of the grime off the brushes and armature. This was as good as I could get...
Not perfect, but I hoped it would be good enough to get the motor moving. Sadly, that's not the case - still just buzzing at me. Is it unreasonable to expect the motor to move at least a little, given the shape of the brushes and armature? Or should I dig in further into the E unit wiring?
As for that wiring, I'm still trying to figure out how it's all supposed to fit together, but this part certainly doesn't look factory installed...
Any idea what's going on there? Repair, replacement, bypass?
Anyway, I'm going to keep digging at it. For starters, I need to understand the physics of all this a little better. Is there a proper term for this kind of motor? I'm basically comfortable with the principles behind a DC brushed motor, but I don't know so much about AC motors. Knowing what to search for on Wikipedia/Google would be helpful. Also, I found this page at Olsens with some reference material on E units, including a separate schematic for the 390. Any other useful links on how they work? Googling mostly only turns up info on the postwar unit.
