I have a newer Walthers/LL RS-2 that is DCC friendly - yeah - anyway, I have read the little paper that comes in the loco box, and no way will this darn shell just 'lift off by pulling up once you have removed the fuel tank cover'. Actually even the fuel tank cover has to be removed with a knife blade. Anyways I have tried twice now and getting nowhere. And what is Kapton tape and where do it come from? Thanks Tim
Can't help you with the shell removal, but 10 seconds with Google will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about Kapton tape, including places to buy it. Shockingly, you can buy it at KaptonTape.com !! Briefly, it is a temperature-resistant orange-colored electrical tape that is an excellent insulator. It is very thin and so not as bulky as regular electrical tape or shrink wrap. It is used extensively in the space program. Space-walking astronauts have been known to wrap their metal tools with Kapton tape to prevent static discharges. Because it can be made very thin and yet still insulate well, it's used in DCC installations where space is at a premium. Just for fun, here's a Kapton-tape-wrapped tool used by astronauts when working with solar arrays on the ISS. - Jeff
I have one too and you are exactly right about it being difficult to dissasemble!:thumbs_down: I eventually managed to get it off, but i think i started to work one end first and then once there was a small ammount of movement, I moved to the other end. This went on for a while, but it finally gave up and came off:tb-biggrin:. I think that the shell fits so closely to the frame it causes difficulty in dissasembly. I did have to pry around on it more than I would have liked/have done with other models. GOOD LUCK! Chuck:mcool:
BTDT. After popping the fuel tank cover, I was able to get a good grip on the chassiis with a pair of slip-joint pliers, then gently rocked the body side-to-side until it finally let loose of the 4 little nubs on the chassis. You can buy small amounts of Kapton tape from nearly any decoder vendor in addition to the above mentioned site. If required, NCE decoders have a piece in the package with the decoder. Digitrax sometimes uses Kapton tape to keep a piece of foam in place to protect tabs in shipping, although the adhesive doesn't stick very well on the rerun...
Thanks Hey thanks everyone - I will give it a try. I wish N Scale mfrs would start putting more fully equipped DCC engines out, instead of the 1 or 2 here and there. I also wish that the decoders were truly drop-in, instead of wrap this, and add a tiny little helper solder ball here and there - oh well:tb-ooh:
If this loco is anything like the Walthers GP38-2, the first time you remove the shell is the WORST. If it's of similar design, there are four little "bumps" in the frame, one above each side of each truck about halfway up the frame, that fit into little recesses on the shell. The best I could do the first several times I took the shell of my Walthers GP38-2 was to take some toothpicks and very carefully insert them at roughly these points to pull the shell back from those "bumps." It gets easier after a while. I don't normally open my locos all the time, but this is one that I was trying to fit with a decoder, which is a saga in itself. Adam
HOORAH - I dun it - I took the one-end approach - put the ole xacto in the rear end and lo and behold the thing moved this time. Got it out, Yes - the dig decoder did have the Kap tape around the bag, I used it to insulate, and put the ole decoder in AND --- nothing - poo poo poo - so I got technical and used 2 knives at the contact points, and the light flickered - well pull the darn thing back out, and time for the old 'add a blob of solder' cause the new board is too skinny - when they gunna figure out to solve that problem anyhoo? After several retries to get the board back in (too much solder) and some CAREFUL sanding, squashing etc, all was together and she ran like a charm - even for an ex-life-like -
Like most of these type mechs...after the first shell removal...I take a small flat file and knock them nubs down by half. Subsequent shell remoavals are a heck of a lot easier. Just a thought. .
