Hello!
I’ve been converting four Lionel Ready to Play F7 engines over to LocoFi. I’m a life long RC guy but spent a lot of time as a kid with my dads old ‘50s vintage Lionel O gauge trains and I love the concept of the LocoFi product! Obviously the Lionel Ready to play line is not the most scale stuff out there but I somehow ended up with tons of track and 5 train sets of it! After having lots of fun trying to juggle a consist of 4 Locomotives using 4 different handheld transmitters for awhile my research led me to LocoFi And I promptly ordered 4 DDLLHA units! My approach to this project is keep It lighthearted and have fun with this cool product from LocoFi!
So I figured if anyone is interested in this process I’d start a thread for it!
Starting with this guy! Outside:
Inside:
more Pics and notes to follow:)
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Well after a lot of modifying, testing, trying different setups, DDLLHA alone, DDLLHA paired with Cytron MD13S, different motors, different voltages I believe for my application I’ve settled on a final configuration:
1. DDLLHA unit Stand-alone. Due to the load of the final motor selection this is the simplest and most reliable config.
2. RS-365RH-11240 5-pole Motor. This motor fits all the required criteria of dimensions and shaft length plus operating at 24VDC(6sLipo) at full stall only draws about 1.3A(DDLLHA is rated for 2A). I found with a no-load 24V RPM of 11,800 this motor remains very cool and the Locomotive top speed is about the same as before when it was running the stock configuration. One of my goals with these projects was to make the top speed faster and I was able to do so with different available RS-365 brushed motor’s however not only did these motors require the additional Cytron board but they produced ALOT more heat than the settled on motor and with only a plastic gear case that cannot sink heat away that is not good at all.
3. I decided to use all the LocoFi kit provided LEDs. Two for headlights and two for ground lights. I think they look awesome and I can turn the ground lights off/on easily. Again I’m not a scale rail purist, I’m just having fun with these kinda-scale units!
4. I ended up using both of the previously mentioned 50mm speakers. Three of the silver looking ones in the New York units and two of the black ones on the Santa Fe units. These speakers make these units THUNDER! I love it! I can feel it in the floor when they pass! The black ones thunder the most but unlike the silvers are a bit less pronounced on the highs of the bell/horn. I will be posting a video of all five units running together. Hopefully the full sound of these things comes across ok.
5. Done. For now..
I’m a modeler at heart. And I seldom leave thing’s completely alone. I always revisit and modify. Who knows where I’ll take this project from here but for now it’s time to just run ‘em!