2) Cut the copper strip off as close to the brush holder as you
possibly can and solder quickly to the brush cap. Advantage:
don’t have to chase a bunch of parts and rebuild the motor.
Disadvantage: good soldering technique is necessary to keep
from melting the motor frame. If you cannot solder feeder
wires to your track without melting ties, I suggest you don’t try
this at home.
Wire the orange wire to the top (marked) brush. Connect
the gray wire to the bottom brush. Cut the wires to about 2
inches long. Figure 15 shows the motor reassembled into the
frame so that you can get an idea of how the wires will even-
tually be routed. Note that the plastic frame clip is positioned
to help keep the wires and brush caps from contacting the
frame halves.
6.0 Assemble drive train
The next step in reassembling this loco is to put the drive train
back together. However, at this time we have all of the parts
out of the loco. It is a perfect time to clean and lube the loco.
15
15: Motor wired, sitting in
the left frame half.
DCC Impulses column - 9
5.0 Wire motor
Okay, we are through tearing things down. Time to start put-
ting them back together.
First we will isolate the motor and attach wires to it. More TCS
30 AWG wire is needed, this time in gray and orange.
The trick in isolating the motor is to get the copper clip that
connected the motor to the frame half off and a wire soldered
onto the brush cap without melting the motor body. There are
two ways to do this:
1) Remove the brush holder from the plastic motor housing
– pry it up with a flat bladed screwdriver, without loosing the
parts inside. Remove the copper contact strip. Solder the wire
to the cap of the brush holder Reassemble the brush unit into
the motor. The upside of this is that you have the brush holder
out of the motor and cannot melt the plastic frame. The down
side is that you have to keep track of the brush holder, the cap,
the spring and the brush and reassemble them correctly.
14
14: Cab floor replacement and painting – repairing dam-
age from prior DCC installations.
MRH-Jan 2013
