Plarail/Tomy/Trackmaster - “clam shell” Motor Disassembly - Reassembly Tutorial

ripley802

Here is a quick video on how to disassemble and reassemble the engine from several different Thomas engines but mostly found in Diesel, Duck, Mavis, Diesel 10 and some others. A sharp eye from Super notes that the tiny spring looks to have fallen over, I missed that completely, so be sure to have that in place when reassembling.
[video=youtube]https://youtu.be/1j04gRpVEkc[/video]

Here is an image showing where the spring goes. (Thanks Super) 😃

Super

Excellent video Ripley. Videos like this reminds me of my first times opening any of these motors and how nervous I was. After a while one realizes that these are so mechanically simple that it is no longer intimidating. One piece of advice I can give anyone opening a motor for the first time is to snap pictures as you go so you can reference the placement of the parts. This might have been a problem years ago but in this day and age with cameras on every phone and others carrying small video cameras its easy to do.

jonesejm

Hi guys, this looks great this video, am going to give it a go soon! If things like the switch arm are broken where do you get spares?

ripley802

Spare engines would be the easiest route. I am not aware of the switches being reproduced to purchase by themselves.

Nigels

Waves hand!!! I'm sure they could be printed 🙂

Thanks for the pictures Mr Ripley I'm looking to create a custom gearbox for a project I've got on the go. I've managed to source the metal shafts and various nylon gears (including worm gears), I just have to figure out the arrangement of the gears to get the step down I need so this helps 🙂

ripley802

Yeah, I went that route too with the Western steamer repairs I was doing for Muddy. I found the shafts and the closest gears to be original but in the end I had to source spare engines and scavenge the gears. I could never get the replacements to fit right. :-(

thehsvdude

cool video!

jonesejm

I fixed it! Not bad for my first go. To be fair looks almost new!!!

........and another one!!!

Super

Good job Jonese, You are now on your way to master repairer.

Nigels

ripley802 wrote
Yeah, I went that route too with the Western steamer repairs I was doing for Muddy. I found the shafts and the closest gears to be original but in the end I had to source spare engines and scavenge the gears. I could never get the replacements to fit right. :-(

Well I don't need to replicate a gear box, I'm planning on making a brand new custom one for a model that doesn't have one because its not motorised. It's going to be an interesting ride, but if I can pull it off it is going to be great 🙂