Made two important discoveries with my 6 motor K-Line E-9s. First off, in the process of removing the truck sideframes for repainting, I had to separate the trucks from the motor. Not a big deal but it enabled seeing into the gearbox. All 6 were nearly dry. Before reassembling them I filled the gearboxes with grease. What I noticed after test running them that grease can run out the motor shaft bushing at the bottom of the truck. I suspect a lot of K-Line diesel trucks are made this way so check the bottom of the trucks and if you can see a shaft next to the mounting screw, grease can get out. I will cover that hole up somehow, not sure how yet, Flextape????
Also its been a while that I upgraded an engine that had capacitors across the motor leads. K-Line does this to smooth out the power. I had forgotten that Jon recommends removing these capacitors when installing a Cruise board.
When I first test ran all three engines connected to a single Cruise M the combination was drawing over 5 amps. Some of that was for lights and fan motors but mostly going to drive motors.
Now with all engines lubricated and capacitors removed the three engines together are drawing about 1.5 amps. Its actually fluctuates some between, 1.2 and 1.6 amps but still way low for six motors.
I am leaning now instead of using one Cruise M and one Cruise Commander I may go simply with one Cruise Commander. I should have plenty of headroom and won't have create a lashup with multiple RxLCs.
Moral here is yank those capacitors if you haven't already.
Pete
