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I almost never throw anything away. And it's been a long cold winter in the Chicago area, so I've had a lot of time to kill.

From the bottom you get a hint that something is different:



I got the chassis on ebay. I wasn't told that one motor mount had broken off or that the rear bushings were heavily CA'd due to chassis damage. I salvaged what I could and tossed it in junk box. :(

The open-frame motor also came from ebay, in a box with a bunch of stuff. All it needed was a bit of cleaning and a drop of oil and it ran fine. But I had no use for it, so it went into the parts bin.

Then I have no idea why, but one day while driving to work it hit me. I might be able to put that motor in the busted chassis!

The Dremel got a good work-out, but I think it was worth it:



The slots that holds the bushings were cut way back:



And portions of the chassis were trimmed to allow the motor to fit and to float:



There are springs in the new mounting tabs:



But after trying it different ways, it turned out that it ran best when the screws were tight.

It runs OK on my 45' Carrera track, but not great. It's slow to accelerate and never reaches top speed. I don't recall what the gearing is, but it's nothing extreme. I'm not sure if it is the gearing or the motor. I don't think it's my track power, it can supply up to 5 amps. I'd change the gearing, but I only found one pinion and one crown that fit.

All in all it was a fun project. A great way to kill some time.

Oh, do any of you know what motor this is?

Thanks,
Ron

That looks to me like an old Atlas. The reason they get slow is the magnet loses it's force and needs to be re-magnatized. Good luck finding a shop with a motor remagnitizer these day. Try Professor Motor.

I really like this application. Making vintage work in today's world. :flags-waveusa:

Nice work, I like the approach.

VERY interesting! Nice work!

Nice use of the Artin chassis. Agree with the assessment....it's an Atlas or maybe a Strombecker version. Those were basically train motors pushed into service as slot car motors. They normally don't have the same RPM. Sometimes train shops have magnet zappers, you could try there. The other thing I have done is put strong rare earth magnets on the end. After some time it will strengthen the magnet a bit. Or just leave it on there for a stronger field..... :lol: Not sure if that really works though.

Biggest issue is probably the gears, if you can change them out you might get more grunt (the train motors were better for torque IIRC).

I think it's a great use of what would be (like you said) junk.
Great idea ... J Y D

I don't remember Pittman's having anything but the side mounted brush arrangement. That would suggest to me that it is not a Pittman.
You need to run those old 60s motors at a higher voltage than most run today.
If you have a variable power supply, add a couple of volts and see if it makes a difference.

Fantastic. Gives us all a little hope when we look at our spare parts bins. :lol:

As I said, retro, the one in my picture is older, and it probably is from a train. The Pittman motor was sold in many configurations and under many names. They all came from the same place originally.

Thanks guys, glad to hear you like it!

I counted teeth, 28/8 = 3.5:1. So I don't think that's the issue.

I've got some Radio Shack "dot" magnets. I tried various combinations in various places. If it made any difference, it wasn't much.

I'll run it for a few weeks, then it will probably just become a good conversation piece.

See that's exactly why I never throw anything away (well, anything that might be useful for slots).

That motor looks very similar to the old Hornby locos and earlier scalextric cars. They can also be found in some of the SCX vintage series. They were never really a hotrod of a motor, but will well and truly hold their own on a tight and technical track. They seem to work a lot better with a controller at lower ohm.

Creative ride there!

There was a guy on this forum selling that chassis with yellow bell motors several years back for seemingly cheap prices. The motor wasn't bad, great braking. But the chassis was utter garbage. Mine cracked around the motor mounts (he blamed it on shipping) too. The plastic is unstable and brittle. The wheels wobble.

The motor looks like many a Strombecker open frame motor. Fairly low max RPMs of something like 14k or so. I was not aware a same/similar motor was used in trains - what trains were those? HO? S?

PGTR - Hornby trains are what they call OO, they run on HO gauge track but are a slightly bigger scale. 1 : 76 as opposed to 1 :87 for HO.
Don't know why but it may be that British Locos and Rolling stock tended to be smaller as a rule than US ones.