Hornby Sentinel Motor Upgrade...

I've been pleased with the performance of my Pi liveried chain drive Hornby Sentinel, however the rod driven model was second hand and never ran quite as smoothly. I wondered if replacing the 3 pole motor would improve matters...

My pair of Hornby Sentinels. Whilst the chain driven example is a lovely runner the rod driven version was never as smooth or controllable.

I chose to replace the motor with a 1020 from Tramfabriek, a quality coreless motor and Sven offers great customer service, my orders always arrive promptly, neatly packaged with some great little touches in the style and design of the 'header cards'. Although the website says '.nl' don't be put off, Sven is based in Eton Wick in the UK. No connection, but always a satisfied customer. I also sourced the 1mm - 2mm adaptor and flywheel from Sven, and picked up one of his gear pullers because my aging example wasn't always as finessed for this smaller work as I'd like... anyhow...

Replacing the motor took all of 15 minutes. Removing the worm, refitting on the new motor. Cutting off the Hornby motor leads, and connecting up the replacement (note black to the positive terminal if you want the direction to match other models). The flywheel is a push fit on the rear motor shaft, and I packed it up 5mm and clipped in a section of Evergreen styrene tube. The results were a little dissappointing, the new motor is lovely and smooth and quiet, but the manufacturing tolerances and design quality of the Hornby chassis is a little clunky. The gear ratio is low, so the reduction is poor and it's basically a slot car racer! A replacement motor hasn't helped, in some ways its worse because the free revving coreless motor actually spins faster than the old Hornby 3 pole it replaced. That said, I have a strong suspicion that if fitted with a quality DCC decoder and small stay alive this conversion will be a real transformation. The smooth motor exhibits none of the cogging you get with the Hornby one. However, that is not a cheap solution, so the search for a quality, ready to run, slow running industrial diesel continues, with the Sentinel too fast (and I expect it's 0-6-0 big brother to be similar) and the Janus a little light footed I wonder if the Heljan 02 will be all it could be? Until next time more soon...