I was out with the wife in Folsom over the weekend and I found in a new antique shop, an AHM/Riverossi cab forward. They wanted $25. I have it on hold (they didn't have a credit card machine yet). Now, I'm curious, aside from the pizza cutters(is there a replacement drivertrain?) can anyone tell me more about this?
I will say $25?!?!?! Even you can buy it and resell it and make a profit, they go for $50+ on ebay, just saying. Now I personally have been under the hood on one of these, and the mechanism setup isn't gonna be an easy feat to change out, putting new gearboxes in would be pulling your teeth out. Your best bet is just to convert it to a can motor. They will take an 18 inch radius, so that's a plus
But, most of the Riv engines had HUGE flanges, work well on .125 rail, not so well on .083 or smaller. I haven't been "under the hood" since they were new engines....but those guys certainly had a different idea of how to do things. I know on my Riv 2-8-0, which I bought new in the mid-60's...tender mounted motor, got a Menzies Machine Works driveshaft and u-joint kit for it...when we took it out of the b ox three years ago to clean it up for my nephew, the Zamac tender floor had disintegrated and pushed the end wall of the plastic shell out. The motor was mounted to a gearbox in the floor....gear reduction was in the tender, so the driveshaft rotated slowly on high pitched gearing on the driver. So, if they did that on the artic, watch out. Made a new brass floor and bolsters, new NWSL gearbox on the axle, got it all done and ran it, and it about flipped itself off the tracks at anything over a crawl. Seems somewhere we lost the allen setscrew, had a bolt in to hold the u-joint to the shaft....found an allen setscrew and all was well. Maybe it was just on the tender drives, but... They are nice, for those of us who wanted a cab forward, Y6B, or whatever, and couldn't afford brass or Bowser. I saw one in an antique shop for $225 about 5 years ago.....someone had convinced the shop this was a brass, highly collectible unit made in Italy by Ferrari. Twenty five bucks, buy it, sell it to me for twenty five and we'll both be happy (no, wait, where would I put if?). Dave
I thought 25 was a steal. I was under the impression that Roverossi could be upgraded. It for sure is not tender drive. I'm going to pick it up and check under the hood.
FOR 25 BUCKS !!!!! grab it!!!!!! yea they do have kits to repower them nwsl has them i think , but even for 25 bucks buy it & throw it on a shelf
It is a steal. Be very careful when you take the drive bits apart. Rivarossi really liked to use loose ball bearings. They'll go everywhere. Remember there are no parts. Manor Hobbies used to have them until the estate sold the parts off to somebody and they went underground. Look it over well, make sure the major stuff is there. Dave
Went back and picked it up. I need to take it apart and check under the hood, but the shell looks good. If anyone has thoughts on how to replace the pizza cutters, I'm all ears.
the only time I had huge flanges i just put each wheel set in a lathe and run a fine file on them to reduce the size that way.
That would work, but the drivers are undersized to accommodate the flanges. It's more noticeable than I'd like, so full driver replacement would be better.
There is no easy fix to make the drivers the right size, I looked into it but the money and time involved was more than I cared to spend on the project. The Rivarossi engines (post-AHM/IHC) were redesigned and the flanges made smaller, but the drivers were still undersized because they didn't have the cash to redo the molds for the drivers AND they figured that most people wouldn't notice that they were a couple scale inches too small (probably were using the 10 foot rule). On the redesigned engines they chnged the motor to a can type, moved the motor inside the boiler and they added some cab interior detailing but the engines are/were basically unchanged otherwise. I have four of the cab forwards, all different road numbers, from the last run Model Expo imported but they've been in storage since July of 2001 when the portable layout club I belonged to disbanded. Your other option would be to sell the engine on Evilbay, for a profit, and use the money you make as a down payment on an Intermountain engine........but they cost more, lots more.
