converting 1970's lima

[deanno]

I have an old Lima class 33 and a Fowler 4f,is it possible to convert these to DCC.


Just found a post on this

[Bigmet]

Lima is very straightforward for DCC conversion, you just remove the two wires connected one to each brush, and connect these wires to black and red on the decoder. Orange and grey wires on the decoder are connected one to each brush terminal. And you are done. There are obviously other ways: removing much or all of the original wiring and connections, adding extra pick ups, (always a good plan) and the like.

Make sure that the models are good runners before commencing, DCC will not magically improve a poor runner. But usually considerably more running refinement is available with a DCC decoder installed, the noise however will be unchanged...

[Suzie]

They are very easy to convert, but you might need new wheels.

Get a decoder with a big stay alive (plenty of room for the capacitors) and fit a set of Ultrascale wheels and you will have a usable loco.

[Mountain]

I have used old Bachmann decoders and also a few Lenz 103XF decoders and they work fine. I sometimes have to dissable certain settings to enable the decoder to run in its purest form (E.g. dissabling the back emf, inertia etc) as the loco runs better like that. Other then that all should run well as if it was run on D.C.

[gppsoftware]

Many years ago, I fitted an ESU Lokpilot to a Lima class 117 DMU:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89UzmOeuCk4

It totally transformed the drivability of the model.
My suggestion would be that if you want to fit decoders to Lima locos, be selective about your decoder choice: a good quality decoder can transform the loco, a cheap decoder will not.
As others have suggested, Lima models always benefit from extra pickups.

The pickup issue on Lima locos is widely misunderstood. Irregularities in the traction tyre thickness, together with vibration from the motor caused them to constantly wobble which in turn caused loss of pickup.

As you can see in my video, the 'growling' (and therefore, vibration) of the motor has been significantly reduced by the ESU decoder properly controlling the motor. Net result was that it ran significantly better. I didn't realise that a Lima loco could actually run so well!

[Tallpaul70]

Hi All.
My experience is that Lima pancake motors require too high a current (1.0-1.5Amps) to be safe and not blow up good quality chips rated at 1.3amps even with clean wheels and track!

This is especially true and could be expensive if you require sound chips.

If anyone has successfully sound chipped Lima class 117s or GWR passenger or parcels railcars I would be interested to know how they did it and how many hours (approx.) the unit has run since conversion?

Also
Has anyone successfully sound chipped a Lima class 67 which had a 5 pole motor not the old pancake?

Many thanks for any info
Paul