9 Volt motor on Emerald night?

[Maltem]

So what is the best way to put a 9 Volt motor on the emerald night? + Does it work good?

Got 9 Volt and are thinking about getting the emerald night, but i really dont like to have it with PF...

[Bruce]

So what is the best way to put a 9 Volt motor on the emerald night? + Does it work good?

Got 9 Volt and are thinking about getting the emerald night, but i really dont like to have it with PF...

I powered my Emerald Night with two 9 Volt train motors in the tender. I made the tender longer to fit them both in. I left all the gears out of the engine to reduce friction. It runs fine on BayLTC's layout at the last show after I applied my fix. The fix is discussed here:

http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?...erald+night+fix

Bruce

[AllanSmith]

So what is the best way to put a 9 Volt motor on the emerald night? + Does it work good?

Got 9 Volt and are thinking about getting the emerald night, but i really dont like to have it with PF...

At a show last July I powered my Emerald Night with one 9volt motor. I removed the internal gears. It pulled three carriages. I recommend the fix as my one did start to play up after a while.

[Maltem]

So i need 2 motors + making the tender longer (How much longer?) + doing the fix?

Any instructions on the tender?

[AllanSmith]

So i need 2 motors + making the tender longer (How much longer?) + doing the fix?

Any instructions on the tender?

This is how I changed mine with 1 motor. Click here

GOOGLE is your friend:

I also found this PDF file for a longer one motor tender Click here

Also this two motor Click here

and this one motor Click here

Edited January 23, 2010 by AllanSmith

[AllanSmith]

Found some new (Jan 26) instructions to modify the tender on Mike Walsh's LEGO blog. Click here

[Maltem]

So what part do i need to remove in the emerald night?

[fauxfoe777]

I powered my Emerald Night with two 9 Volt train motors in the tender. I made the tender longer to fit them both in. I left all the gears out of the engine to reduce friction. It runs fine on BayLTC's layout at the last show after I applied my fix. The fix is discussed here:

http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?...erald+night+fix

Bruce

I learn more and more as i continue to trouble shoot with this sometimes frustrating train, and still might tinker around a bit more to get it just right. Meantime, i might as well share everything i have learned so far about converting the EN to 9v with one motor...

First, i went with one of the mods Allen provided, a slightly longer tender with one 9v motor: http://lego.haab.us/content/10194-tender-9v.pdf

Love it, simple as that. I had issues at first, which came down to a few different things, but as long as you use a fairly new 9v motor, which runs strong and has good rubber traction left on its wheels, it should do the trick.

Then there's the obvious friction issues with this train, some of which i'm still trying to conquer, but most of them can be solved by using solutions posted in this forum, and a couple i came up with on my own. Here's my take on some of those:

Front Pistons - So far i went with Bruce's intricate fix to eliminate some of the drag caused in this area, and it works great. I may also try swapping out the 1x5 thin arm with a 1x7 thin arm, also mentioned earlier in this string, just to see if the combination of these 2 fixes works even better.

At some point i also noticed that when going around corners (using standard curved tracks), the piston rod on the inside of the curve rubs against the base of the buffer beam (the assemby with the magnet used to connect to other cars), which is beginning to leave quite an annoying scratch mark on that piece, let alone the drag it might be causing on the curves. I plan to remedy this by swapping the 6 stud piston out with a 5 or custom 5.5, and i'll edit later with my results.

Gears - I notice its been mentioned a few times in these forums that people 'removed all the gears'. However, as far as i can tell, only one gear needs to be removed to take them all out of play: the little tan gear on the axel of the only two wheels that would have been powered using the PF motor. I don't see any reason to remove the rest of the gears except to drop a little extra weight, but let me know if i'm missing something here. As far as i can tell, removing that one gear does the trick.

Wheel Assembly Offset - In the lego instructions, they have you offset the wheel assemblies 45 degrees from each other (12:00 & 3:00), but i saw somewhere that offsetting by 90 degrees (12:00 & 6:00) allows the train to run better. After experimenting a bit, i'm not sure the difference is that signifigant, but it seems to smooth things out just a little bit. However, i've seen other posts that swear by the 45 degrees (12:00 & 3:00) method, claiming it works best.

Axels vs Axel Pins - I read something on another forum about removing the technic axels and replacing them with smooth pins instead, also in the interest of reducing friction. I assume they were referring to the same method used to connect all the other wheels on the train, using the little technic axel pins. Well i tried this, and it actually made it run much worse :(

This lead me to thinking maybe i should place ALL of the wheels on axels rather than pins. This would be easy for the large middle wheels, but will obviously take a bit of re-engineering for all of the smaller wheels. Speaking of which, has anyone noticed the smaller wheels not spinning at times, especially on straight-aways? I took the front and rear truck assemblies off the train and noticed when rolling them back & forth on the track independently, the wheels really don't spin that well at all! I decided axels might be the solution, or maybe just freeing up space behind the area where the pins slightly stick out the back side of the bricks in which they are inserted.

Update: Finally got around to trying this, and the train runs much better. I should first say that at some point, i changed the engine from the original 4-6-2 wheel setup to a more pleasant looking 4-6-4 setup, simply by purchasing the pieces needed to recreate the 4-wheel front truck assembly, and then swapped out the 2-wheel rear truck assembly with it to balance out the look of the train. That said, the re-engineering process necessary for putting axels in the truck assemblies is basically the same for the front and rear of my particular engine design.

For this, all i did was move the brown technic bricks forward on the front truck (and backward on the rear truck), so i could run an axel through 2 of the outer small wheels on each truck assembly. This meant ditching the long blue pins, and introducing more of the short black ones to hold everything together, and works just fine. The inner small wheels, however, are still stuck using the axel pins, as the current/stock swivel method used to connect the trucks to the train blocks me from using an axel for these wheels. But at least the area behind those pins is now free and clear, which seems to allow them to spin just a bit better. Not sure if i will ever go through the trouble of figuring out how redesign the swivel connections just to get axels through these last wheels, as the train is now running quite well anyway.

I did go ahead and run an axel through the big wheels in the very center of the train as well, which was easy to figure out, but a pain to actually do, as i had to remove many pieces just to get in there and ultimately remove 1 little brown brick (and the grey axel piece that runs through it, gears that were attached to that, etc), and then put everything back together again.

Annoying process that all this was, the train now runs smoother than it ever had before. And don't let this post scare you from purchasing/modding this train. I've had a lot of fun tinkering to get this one right, and i'm sure you will too.

Finally, when it comes to pulling multiple carriages, i always have to add weight to the tender to keep the train running (1 roll of quarters), so if anyone has a solution better than me shopping for a lead brick to hide in my tender, i would appreciate the suggestion :)

Hope this helps one or another.

Cheers,

Pete

Edited April 10, 2010 by fauxfoe777

[fauxfoe777]

At a show last July I powered my Emerald Night with one 9volt motor. I removed the internal gears. It pulled three carriages. I recommend the fix as my one did start to play up after a while.

Hi Allan,

I had originally pestered you with questions, but in time i figured most of them out with some good old trouble shooting, and posted my results above. But thanks so much for the tender design you posted earlier in this string. Above all others i've seen, i still love that one the best :)

Cheers,

Pete

Edited April 10, 2010 by fauxfoe777

[skaako]

Hi everyone. Ive found that by gearing the two sets of flanged wheels together makes it run a lot smoother without adding much friction.

[skaako]

Hi again. Okay... front and rear drivers are not geared together anymore as i said in my last post, i realized having the axles through the drivers is enough. Now i have also put an axle through the very front small wheels, this reduced a bit more friction. Now the biggest difference i have seen yet is from removing all the o-rings from the wheels (except 1 from the drivers, so the wheels keep turning and don't slip sometimes) this allowed me to run it on 1 less power setting on the standard regulator, and going through curves doesn't slow as much as it did. I have also removed all the internal gearing, and i am just using 1 9V train motor in the tender.