Hello, today I have removed the body and then cut the old truckmount rapidos. It also still the old body noses have been cut, to see in the third picture. To be continued. Greets Frank
I know you might not wanna hear it, and maybe you could still do it for some experience doing MT conversions, but that sure looks like an old bachmann sd40. That white stuff is the gear plastic disintegrating, and its gonna grind to a halt in the future. I know this from personal experience with my bachmann plus f7. Maybe you could still run it till it does, but if it was me, I would save your MT conversion for a better candidate. Maybe you can find a chassis or get a replacement chassis from Bachmann, I think they still honor the lifetime warranty.
Frank, Unfortunately, Y0chang is right on the money. The old Bachmann SD40 even in those old archaic days was OK at best, known for its blinking light but not for much else. When Kato introduced the SD40, then the SD40-2 they could be had via the discount mail order houses for $50 and they were definitely worth it, and offered several different combinations to convert to MT couplers, which included the pilot mount or the truck mounted versions. To spend time to try to rehab this unit, and the shell looks very intact is an exercise in futility, and the final reward is not worth the effort. I am not knocking Bachmann products but they warrant criticism for their offerings back then. My suggestion is to finish the coupler conversion and disconnect the motor and gears and run it as a dummy. My mentor was a large Bachmann fan, as he was very old school, and when he died one of the models he left me were a converted Bachmann SD-40-2 cabless dummy he fabricated himself. It of course was totally siezed up, so I just went inside added some unimate couplers and got it rolling freely and use it as a dummy "booster'. You can find SD-40-2's on this website auction or the other ones, or even brave it out for a couple of train shows and you will find a Kato model and I (I betcha we) guarantee it will be worth the wait. Good luck. Ken "FloridaBoy" Willaman
Oh go ahead and convert and have fun. Its good experiance and fun you can always make it a dummy when it dies.
I'm with oldrk on this one, switch em out and have fun. Almost all of my equipment is very old (starting with a 1969 GP40) and since I don't have the budget for new stuff, I just fix it up and/or tune it up and run it carefully. And if anything breaks, I either fix it, or kitbash it into something else fun. Though I must say that I too appreciate the info to prevent me tearing my hair out when/if it did melt down. That's a nice advantage of being here on TB. :thumbs_up:
Hello, the first coupler is installed. On the pictures are my SD40-2 coupeld with the SD70M. greets Frank
Looks good. I used to have one of these in Santa Fe, it was noisy but for poor junior high student it did the trick until I bought something better. Kevin
I wasn't trying to discourage him from doing the conversions, just trying to point out the pitfalls and because I noticed the white fuzz and wanted to point out the cause. If the loco still runs, I would do a good clean out and lube and you can still prob get good mileage out of it, and since the coupler would be on the shell, im sure he can get another chassis for parts. I learned about n scale loco construction from dissembling my LL and bachmann locos to get them to run, and so was better prepared when I did DCC conversion later to my new locos, same thing with converting my Rivarossi heavyweights to MT, I learned the fine art of swearing...i mean coupler assembly and screwing in microscopic screws.
Hello, it goes on, the SD in the MTL coupler, here at the first run with the 250T crane. The rear handrails has suffered somewhat during the operation, for the reason it is missing, was supposed to be done before new. greets Frank
Hello, the rear coupler mounted again, because he was about 1mm too high and the face-mounted layovers. The front. The tail. So slow that it is. Greet Frank
