boBQuincy
<font color=green>I am not carrying three pods<br>
- Joined
- Nov 26, 2002
- Messages
- 5,083
This was the first plan for the two part project, the high speed monorail was a spinoff from re-engineering the gears and drive system. This part took longer because of more complexity and greater precision.
Disney's monorail models are nice but most of them are noisy and run rough. Each one I bought was worse as the tooling wore out, the gears were molded poorly, and the drive wheels were further from round. It's a shame because the model has so much potential plus it is all we have.
One of the main requirements was to get away from the poor drive wheel design. The conical rollers on a tapered beam shape are one of the worst features of the monorail. The new drive wheel runs on the top of the beam so the beam could now be rectangular, like the real one. All it takes is replacing the conical rollers with cylindrical ones (made from plastic tubing).
The subframe, which screws into the shell just like the original gearbox, has rubber mounts to further reduce noise and vibration. Overall this is a great improvement over the original model and with the Deltang RC control it now runs like a fine scale model train, smooth and realistic.
What does this take? If you can do the subframe, not much. The parts are about $30 and if you are good with tools it could be done in a couple evenings. The only critical dimension is the spacing between the gears which has to be right to get quiet operation.
The radio receiver (if you go with RC) needs at least 3 volts so the original two batteries are a little too low. Three AAA batteries will fit or we can use one (or two) AA lithium-ion (3.7 V).
On the new beam, made from viny molding.
How does it run? Smoothly. And quietly. The speed control is smooth from barely crawling to full speed (about the same as the original but that can be adjusted with gearing).
As with the high speed monorail, I am done with this project and ready to get back to building a layout for my N scale monorail.
Disney's monorail models are nice but most of them are noisy and run rough. Each one I bought was worse as the tooling wore out, the gears were molded poorly, and the drive wheels were further from round. It's a shame because the model has so much potential plus it is all we have.
One of the main requirements was to get away from the poor drive wheel design. The conical rollers on a tapered beam shape are one of the worst features of the monorail. The new drive wheel runs on the top of the beam so the beam could now be rectangular, like the real one. All it takes is replacing the conical rollers with cylindrical ones (made from plastic tubing).
The subframe, which screws into the shell just like the original gearbox, has rubber mounts to further reduce noise and vibration. Overall this is a great improvement over the original model and with the Deltang RC control it now runs like a fine scale model train, smooth and realistic.
What does this take? If you can do the subframe, not much. The parts are about $30 and if you are good with tools it could be done in a couple evenings. The only critical dimension is the spacing between the gears which has to be right to get quiet operation.
The radio receiver (if you go with RC) needs at least 3 volts so the original two batteries are a little too low. Three AAA batteries will fit or we can use one (or two) AA lithium-ion (3.7 V).
On the new beam, made from viny molding.
How does it run? Smoothly. And quietly. The speed control is smooth from barely crawling to full speed (about the same as the original but that can be adjusted with gearing).
As with the high speed monorail, I am done with this project and ready to get back to building a layout for my N scale monorail.
