Gave my Heidi its MOT

[stockers]

Running Heidi at the weekend she seemed a bit rough. This has always been a very smooth runner with good electrical continuity.

Whipped off the base plate and had a good look. One problem was slightly jerky running - as if something was binding. Yes - you guessed - the quartering was out one tooth. It took a bit of careful examination to determine this - at first it looked all OK until I rotated the cranks to bottom dead centre and forward dead centre. Then I could see that the rear axle was one tooth behind the front.

She also stopped a couple of times on frogs. I got out the test meter and found that continuity between the skates and the wheels was patchy - on investigation I found the skate spring on one side was binding and on the other it was partly compressed, permanently. Also one middle wheel was hit and miss as to whether or not it picked up. New massoth skates - didnt fit. Well they did but were too tight in the slide and binded. So I refitted the original ones with the massoth new springs. A new pickup plunger solved the wheel pick up.

On to the track tonight just after dusk and she ran brilliantly, smooth and slow, over pointwork and falling petals from the magnolia tree - didn't miss a beat - beautiful.
Sorry - no pictures of the works - too busy.

 

[mike]

herev u go allan, have one off mine

 

[stockers]

Thanks Mike

 

[Neil Robinson]

Can't beat a bit of TLC.
Earlier this year a mate asked me to look at a Heidi he'd bought last year. He liked the loco but was dissappointed with the running, so much so that he'd fitted pickups to the pony trucks. A quick check revealed that on one side only the pony truck wheel was picking up. I removed the baseplate to find a contact wire was displaced slightly. That was fixed in a matter of moments but it took a little longer to obtain and sort out the skate springs as they had overheated at some time thereby loosing their springiness and melting a little of the surrounding plastic. Nothing that new springs and some judicious filing couldn't fix.

 

[Spule 4]

Sounds like a tune up I had to give to a post 1988 Austrian U, including the wiper spring problem on one skate. Again, once all done, much better running!

 

[steinz]

Thanks for sharing that with the rest of us, Stockers - really appreciated !!