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New page added August 20, 1999 by Lennart Elg
New Gearing for the MDC Shay-to-Climax Conversionby George PiersonAlthough I was very pleased with my kit-bashed Climax (see Feb, 96 MR), the unrealistically high speed of the flywheels was a disappointment.Thanks to Precision Scale, the problem is largely solvable. Their all-brass 2:1 Micro gear set (#4018.9), designed for their On3 Casey Jones motor car, works very well. Here's how I installed it. First, remove the small shaft from the smaller of the PSC gears. Carefully drill out a centered hole in this gear for a .032" spring steel rod. I recommend a lathe for this.
Next, remove all but about 1/16" from the small gear's cup end and cut a 7/64" hole [see fig. 1a & b]. insert the spring steel driveshaft (after first filing an angle on its end) and fill the hole with solder. Attach to this the NWSL cup (you may want to use a larger one than mentioned in the original article).
Instead of the 2mm driveshaft through the bull gear as recommended by the original article, I used two brass tubes (1/16" and 3/32") [see fig. 2] soldered together instead, with the spring steel shaft from the PSC gear through their center. Next, install the larger PSC brass gear on the new 3/32" cross shaft for the flywheels. Now insert the spring steel shaft with the small PSC brass gear through the PSC brass bearing/retaining ring. Be sure everything is turning freely; then file an angle on the end of the spring steel driveshaft, insert it through the brass tubing/shaft and fill the front of this tubing/shaft with solder (the solder holds the steel -shaft because of the angle on its end). Attach the NWSL cup to this tubing/shaft. Finally, because this arrangement shortens the driveshaft to the front truck, which causes binding on curves, carefully cut out a hole on the rear of the front truck plastic casing so that the cup can nestle closer to the worm. [see fig. 2] With this modification, my engine can negotiate 15" curves. All this takes some fiddling but the results are worth it.
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