Ncore

Eurobricks Vassals
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Everything posted by Ncore

  1. Hi, new member here, from Finland. Long story short: I recently visited Vanha-Palikka in Kyrö, Finland, and after looking at the trains there I realized I have a rarity in my hands (or rather, in the attic) - 7750 steam locomotive. So I digged up my old stuff and got many donations from friends who had similar stuff lying around. I had one dead motor on my own (shell cracked thanks to repair attempts at youth), and got another already neatly opened from a friend's treasure pile. After numerous youtube videos, getting proper gear (silicone grease, right kind of plastic glue) and reading up on stuff I after much headscratching got to work to make one functioning motor out of the two dead ones I had. It was eventually a great success, it worked perfectly and didn't make any excess noise. And then I set it on a locomotive and started driving with another locomotive on the track. They were going opposite directions. I am quite sure I returned all parts as they originally were - except maybe the axles, but their gearing is such that it shouldn't matter. [Edit: As I was re-reading this, I realized there is a 50% chance I flipped the motor unit itself upside down... but that shouldn't matter, should it?] Has anyone ever seen anything like this? Any idea what could be causing this, or if there is something that could be done to reverse the direction? (Not sure I'd reverse the direction even if it were easy, I might actually enjoy having one engine on its own loop going the opposite direction, but anyway...)
  2. A long due addition: Yes, the glue held the support clip. It works now, and no noise. This time I lubricated the motor with lithium grease... and oh boy, it worked well. I opened another black motor and lubricated it the same way, but now I have a problem: The lubrication is too good. I have three separate loops on my track, ie. I can drive three trains at the same time. My 7750 has four small passenger wagons, an the other thoroughly maintained motor is on my 7725. But those two on track and transformer at full power... and they will derail at corners. Either one of them alone and they will derail at the first corner. I have to run three trains or tone down the power. Well, I guess that's a positive problem...
  3. Ncore

    TUTORIAL Replace bulb on 12v light brick

    So. My light bricks are apparently the old kind, where you simply can not get the metal contacts off. As you can't get them off the brick, you can't replace the bulbs with leds and attach them the same way - ie. sqeeze the contacts between the metal contact rings and the plastic. As the metal contacts are attached to the plastic brick, you can't solder anything onto the contacts either - it would melt the brick (tried that). So I was left with one option. Solder the led directly to the wire, put it inside the light brick with the wires sticking out of the contact holes, and hot glue the whole thing so that the solder isn't exposed to whatever movement happens on the wires, and keeping the led fixed in its place. Then add a one-pronged connector to the end of both wires. As I had a led without a resistor and a separate resistor, I also made an invention: Use 13 V AC power, direct one wire through a resistor (attached as the led above), then on to the led (through one wire, again), on to the next led (again, through one wire), etc. You can daisy-chain these leds as many as you want (tested on three so far though), and the benefit is that you only need one wire to connect them. Then eventually circle back to the power source. Of course all of the leds need to be connected in the right direction.
  4. Ncore

    TUTORIAL Replace bulb on 12v light brick

    Apparently they are not entirely hollow tubes, there is some sort of... roundness to the form. https://imgur.com/a/3hCou0I
  5. Ncore

    TUTORIAL Replace bulb on 12v light brick

    Nope, can't see anything. The pictures aren't there... Looks like in my bricks (the two I have opened) the contacts are just hollow tubes, but they won't come out. Even getting the bulb contacts out between the plastic and the contacts seems impossible - but could of course be that they are the thing that is hold the contacts in place...
  6. Ncore

    TUTORIAL Replace bulb on 12v light brick

    Apologies for reviving an old topic... ...but I am trying to do the same thing. Replacing 12V light brick interiors with leds, that is. Originally I thought I won't bother, but after rest of my family unintentionally left the lights on for the night and in the morning both of my station lights were out, I started to realize a more long term solution is needed... leds. An additional benefit I discovered when testing this by connecting the leds and a resistor to 13V AC lego wire: You can chain the leds using only one wire (of course you need to make every led in the chain is the right way), on to the next, and onward... until circling back from the last led. (This requires the leds themselves have no resistor, but that you have one resistor of the right value in the chain.) But when trying to take apart the light brick I ran into problems. Eventually I managed to get the brick open nicely, only broke one. Then I struck a wall at the above instruction step 5: How do you get the metal contacts neatly removed? They are so tightly squeezed in the plastic brick and impossible to get a hold on that the only way I managed to get them off was using some round metal of a similar size and hammering them right through (after nothing else had worked). Well I got them off alright, but there is no way they'll fit back in, let alone hold the led wire tightly in place between the metal ring and the plastic. Or does anyone come up with a better solution during the past years?
  7. Well well. Now I opened another motor, black one this time. It drove in "the standard direction" before opening. I did not remove the coil from the armature. I might have switched tire axles. I might have turned the armature upside down during the process. And now it drives in the opposite direction. Interesting.
  8. Hello everyone, My 7866 remote controlled level crossing does not work as intended when I dug it up from the attic after a mere 35 years after putting it there. The lights only blink when I am holding down the "down"-button. If I am not holding it down, the lights are totally off. I've tried reversing the wires etc. Any idea where is the problem? The control unit? The separate flash unit? I tend to think it's the actual control unit (as in "does not give power to the flash unit unless holding down the down-button"), as the flash unit only makes the flash.
  9. Well. A miracle happened. My stepdaughter came in and wanted to test drive the set, and once she closed the gates on the level crossing, the lights started flashing! Apparently she has a magic touch...
  10. After practising with a black motor I received pre-opened from a friend, I dared open my 7750 motor. Confined to home as I was (because of flu), I used a very poor razor (didn't have a better one available), but apparently it was enough. The nail in the plug hole was a good advice - I used a flat-ended screw though. First some razor action, then slight twisting of the axle (very gently), then some screw hammering on one hole (yes, I know how it sounds), then some more gentle twisting, and I got a teeny tiny promise on the hammered corner. So some more hammering on the other hole, a little bit more twisting, and one end came slightly loose. Then just patiently and carefully used a small flat screwdriver to peel it off. 40 years old glue wasn't a match. Since I had found out alcohol was not really all that useful cleaning pickups this old (previously I used over an hour and a half to clean TWO pickups enough that they would conduct a little bit electricity, ie. move the motor), I just took the brutal approach and used a flat small screwdriver horizontally (ie. on its side) to carve out the oxidised material from the top of the pickups (on both sides - both outside and on the inside of the motor side). Boy, was there plenty of it before at least some partly shining surface came into view... In fact already after handling two pickups I had to wash my hands. They were so black from the stuff. Once I started putting the engine together I noticed something weird... It seems the "A" and "B" side markings on the bottom of the motor were reversed. That A clearly would not fit that side. So I ignored them. Anyone else noticed this? Not typical for German engineers to make mistakes like this... I accidentally broke the small clip on the side, at the place where the third wheel clips in (compare pictures 1 and 2). I figured it wouldn't matter, but after testing the motor after putting it back together and lubricating it, I realized without that support the engine was shaking and making a terrible noise all the time. So I glued the clip back together with the bottom and hope it holds once it dries up, and then I'll continue the project (final testing and closing the case).
  11. I wish there was a possibility to give +1 to helpful posts. You guys certainly earned it! Yes, during the dark hours of the night I came to the same realization... the motor inner parts in fact were from a friend who had gotten it from a friend, and were already opened when I got it... therefore someone must have reversed the polarity (Hah! Got to say it!) inadvertently before I got it. I accidentally glued the motor in a way I think it will be a hard job to re-open it... all of the glue is inward. Oh well, I guess I'll use this engine for an assembly locomotive. I'll have I guess... five engines in addition to this, so there's plenty of them anyway.
  12. I have actually watched that video multiple times while figuring out what to do and how!
  13. Well, I sure didn't remove the black metal casing from around the armature (because the plastic axle holders were in the way and I didn't really need to get it out), and since the main axle can only go one way (due to the contact pins touching the axle having a very specific place), I can't imagine how I could have turned it around. Or I am mistaking something?
  14. That's where it gets suspicious - I didn't remove the armature assembly from inside the motor, since the plastic clips (around the main axle) holding it to the base were in the way (it wouldn't slide through). Or do you mean removing the entire armature + surrounding shell from between "A" and "B" blocks? That I did do, of course - can't really clean and lubricate everything without doing that.
  15. Ncore

    NEW MEMBERS TRAIN TECH Registry

    Hello everyone! Back in the early 80's me and my brother had a 12V train system. First one, 7725, I bought with my own saved birthday money, and since then we bought a lot of stuff together. At most we had three engines (7725, 7750 and 7735), three switches and enough track to make an 8-shaped track and an oval around it + one parking track. Early December I got a new spark into the thing while visiting a local Lego cafe, where I learned that our old 7750 steam locomotive was very rare and expensive. I had had the train parts in my own attic for a few years already (from our parents' place), but hadn't bothered to look them all that closely. As I then told a few people I had taken them out and planned to build a track and test whether they still work after 40 or so years, I had two major donors giving me their 12V lego stuff. In the end I had three engines and enough track to fill a quarter of our living room, and let our almost 5-year old drive the train. (Only one of the engines was in good working order and one of our old engines lost who knows where over the years, so basically only one engine in use before I managed to service one... 7750 engine still waiting for maintenance.) Since then I've bought some carefully considered additions from BrickOwl and eBay, and am looking forward to renovating that upstairs room to have more space to m... krhm, our son's lego train tracks and build a lego city connected to it.
  16. Indeed. Once I have enough space (get the proper room renovated and emptied of useless stuff) I'm planning to make at least three separate loops - God knows I have the tracks and switches to do it...
  17. Well, not completely, since the small plastic plates that will hold the motor in place in the chassis were in the way, so I couldn't get the motor coil part out of the magnet chassis. Might it be that I have the first and only 12V motor to run the opposite way? That would be an achievement. The magician himself is astonished as well...