Lima O gauge 0-4-0 diesel shunter.

Hi Paul, to be honest I have only ever seen one other of these locos, and the owner had made a much better job of detailing and painting it, it was for sale at £100 at the time I thought it expensive, but after doing mine I,m not so sure. Keith, the Hornby chip was a freeby so nothing lost except my time, I,m not sure what the current draw on this engine is, I don,t have an ammeter to check it, so I am loathe to spend on an expensive chip in case I toast it.

Pete.

 

Just an update on an old thread. I managed to get a Zimo decoder for it, one of their new budget ones about £20, it did improve the running slightly but I am probably expecting more than these old engines were capable of. And on that note, the reason for this update.
I was following a build on farcebook and the guy was remotoring his Lima shunter, the same as mine. He has used a replacement that almost just drops in, and had posted a link to the supplier. These motors are similar to the motors Keith used on his Lima locos in OO but bigger.
Any way I ordered one and its arrived.
First the loco.



Destruction's.



The motor.







It looks a fairly easy install, I just need to get me a glue gun.
Once I start work on it I will post up the process, the lad who did the original install was over the moon with his loco afterwards.
The lad who supplies the new motors also has a conversion for the Lima 4F but it is a slightly different install.

Cheer's, Pete.

 

I had some time to play with today so I decided to make a start on fitting the new motor to the loco.
I started of by unclipping the body from the chassis.



As can be seen it is already chipped, this however doesn't make much difference.
Turning it over you can see the two screws holding the dummy frames.



Once removed the bottom comes off, revealing two more screws holding two heavy lead weights. I don't think its desperate to remove these but it doe's make life easier, especially as I had stuck the chip to one.



Next I removed the two screws holding the front of the motor along with the two brushes, these have springs that are easily lost if cares not taken removing the front. I doubt I will reuse them but I have safely bagged them up just in case.



Next is the gutting of the original Lima motor and fitting the new one.

 

Now we come to the replacing the innards on the chassis.
The rotor with gear wheel just pulls out and the outer ring magnet follows just as easily.





Now this is where the fitting of the new motor becomes slightly more difficult than the instructions describe.
The motor supplied is different to the one in the instructions as it is half as deep again and slightly smaller in diameter, the latter isn't really a problem but the former is as you need to replace the pick up holder and with the motor now standing proud of the body it wouldn't go on.



I didn't spot this until after glueing the motor in place.



So to get the pick up holder to fit I had to trim back some of the glue blobs at the top left and right then carve out some of the plastic from inside the holder, luckily it is fairly soft but it still took a while as I kept having to trial fit it. Anyway after much cursing and under breath mutterings I got it back together.





I neglected to take any more photos as I got a bit giddy wanting to try it out. After a good clean and polish of the pick ups and cleaning the test track I fired it up.
Performance wise I would say it is 100%+++ better, slow speed running is amazing, I need to get it on my rollers for a good run before giving it another run on the track.
I think despite the trouble putting it all back together this is a brilliant upgrade and I would heartily recommend it.

Cheer's, Pete.

Ps, it took me about an hour and a half from start to finish. If I had known about the holder needing work on probably an hour.

P.