Just ordered 200 of these ball bearings after Janne75 send me a link to it. Thank you !

So I will have a lot to do when it arrives

Do you always secure the ball bearing With super glue / super glue gel to be safe or is it not necessary ?

I have not put any glue to motor shields but in some locomotives the frame side hole is too big and the bearing therefore too loose in it. I have then put very carefully small drops of gel glue to the bearings outer part only and then checked that it still rotates like a bearing should do when it is installed in the frame and dried. Clean it like Matt suggested. When you drill the final 4.0 mm hole do it quite fast. I mean with this, don´t "hone" the hole any larger with that 4.0 mm drill to avoid the hole to be any larger than needed. Remember that plastic is a bit elastic anyway to let the bearing go in even if the hole is slightly too tight for it. If the hole is then totally too tight you can always take the 4.0 mm drill bit and hone it slightly by hand rotating the drill bit in the hole. Many of my motor shields first seem to be too tight for the bearing to fit, but when you press it in it goes ok most of the time = snap in. You can put the bearing on the table or similar and then press the motor shield on it. There are many ways to do it. No need for glue in the motor shield this way. You should drill the motor shield first with 2.0 mm, then 2.5 mm, 3.0 mm, 3.5 mm and finally that 4.0 mm drill. This helps to get the plastic motor shield hole to be bored in the center. I drilled all but a few of the first motor shields by battery operated hand drilling machine. It is easier to correct the bore to the center if needed, say you see after you have bored your 3.0 mm hole and the hole is slightly misaligned you can do the next drilling with 3.5 mm to correct it easier this way.

Pål, I´m glad you got yours ordered .

Cheers,
Janne

Hi all,

Today I was running with my oldest son (6 years old) our analog locomotives on the garage layout. I took both 3104 bodys off and I had forgotten that I had already converted both of them with ball bearings as they have DCM motors. So those ball bearings made me think of my digital locomotives ball bearing conversions and especially what was left undone.

I managed to dismantle this time that very difficult Märklin 37196 DRG E 91.9 . The difficult part of this one was to be able to take the motor shield and the lowest screw away from the loco. I had to take three bolts off from siderod to put it hanging out of way from the fourth bolt. Now it has the frame side ball bearing installed and tomorrow I will drill the motor shield hole from 1.5 mm to 4.0 mm to be able to install that other ball bearing. So if you are going to do your very first ball bearing conversion, don't start with this 37196! There are much easier ones to start with .

Today I also installed ball bearing in all six C-Sinus motored locomotives which I have at the moment. I will get also 39560 SBB Ce 6/8 III green C-Sinus Crocodile soon and I will immediately install a ball bearing to that one as this modification improves these C-Sinus motored locomotives also. Better to have a ball bearing than plastic bush and no drilling reguired = quickly done . There is not a ball bearing on the other side as the C-Sinus motor is completely different and has only a bush on the frame side (gear side). It is the same size as in DCM motored locomotives and these very same bearings go there also. I converted these C-Sinus locomotives: 39103 DB BR 01.10, 39190 DB E 19, 39221 DRG E 94, 39561 SBB 6/8 III brown Crocodile, 39579 DB BR 103, 39821 DB V 200.1. They are all perfect now!

Cheers,
Janne

Hi,

Yes these C-Sinus motored have bush on the frame side, but SDS motored don't have as it is again completely different. You have to install the bearing in place of that plastic bush like with DCM locomotives.

Janne

Just take a trip to me and I'll put you to work on my locomotive's !!!

I'll start with my machines and I found SKF builds that kind of roll bearing.


http://www.skf.com/group...gnation=W%20638%2F1.5-2Z

I have to quote the price, but if you ask me, I'll go with SKF... At the end I'll do this to only 8 engines.

Moritz or less: Euro 0.86 for 50 units

www.shop.kkpmo.com

Well, ordering from Australia we don't pay tax

John

good news, so its not only me who can drill a hole as you said the tip of the centre drill is 1.5mm and than expands to 4mm, the 5mm centre drill has a tip of 2mm again suitable for the motor bogie hole.

I hope more modelers would take on this exercise as it saves you maintenance and other problems down the track.

Märklin should have changed it over to ball bearings years ago if it is so easy for us to do it; there was no excuse for Märklin not going down that path from the 70's onwards. it also showed clearly Märklin tried to correct the problem when a.) different metals meet or metal and plastic doesn't go together but in the end they gave up.; these days Märklin is introducing more and more DC motors whereas a ball bearing(s) is not necessarily needed.

some modelers have also asked the question numeral times: Why should I add ball bearings and what are the benefits ?

a.) the motor runs quieter
b.) no more oiling is needed for the armature shaft (front & back)
c.) because there is no more oil present the brushes will last longer and so will the armature
d.) less oil will get onto the tracks (less maintenance)
e.) to have the motor run smoother there is still another problem present:

when Märklin presses the brush holder assembly onto to the brush plate , the force can lift the brush holder assembly upwards and therefore distorts the true 90° angle between brush holder/armature and brush plate. I've written to Märklin years ago pointing out the manufacturer process 90° aligning fault between armature and the brushes over time they did adjust the force when fitting the brush holder assembly onto the brush plate but it still doesn't solve the problem 100 % what they should have done is extend the brush holder shaft and than secure it onto the brush plate at the end by tucking it underneath the brush plate this way the brush holder assembly would never be able to lift up.

this is one of the reasons you may wonder sometimes why is one loco running smoothly and the other at a lesser speed.; another observation should be noted: the tension spring tension



regards.,

John

50 bearings just arrived for me last week. Didn't cost much and I was surprised how small the package was. Could easily get 300 of those into my wallet as well as a few coins.
Might star with the 3000's first.
Dereck

I converted and test my BR 80 (37046) last night after doing the brush shafts and ball bearing install.

The ball bearing install was text book. With the smooth hole from the centre drill, it looks like a factory installation.

Unfortunately I don't think it has improved the noise of the DCM motor.
More so, now at high speed it has a whine which gets louder - though such a locomotive is not to be driven at such a speed.

It could be the brushes need time to wear after the shaft position may have changed slightly, or it could be the ball bearings themselves?

In any case it is hard to compare without the original, so for my next conversion of a rather noisy BR52, I will do a before and after video.

Eric,

this looks very very neat & clean, what type of drill did you use ? just check the left hand brush holder and see if its flat with the brush plate and not raised, this again will affect the locos running and noise level.

John

I know this is off topic, but I think it's appropriate to repeat what I wrote years ago on the"noisy Märklin locos" subject.

The "noise" of the original Märklin motors has been a topic of interest for as long as I have played with trains (i.e. over 65 years)

The noise originates essentially in the gear train as you may have suspected.
The commutator is also a notable noise source, especially the flat versions of older locos, and finally the magnetic noise of the AC powered motors is the source of that buzzing we have all learned to love.( with a somewhat higher pitch in 60 Hz countries...)

In theory, an ideally cut and assembled gear train should make *no noise at all*, as there should be no friction between meshing surfaces: they are supposed to **roll** on each other. No rubbing.

Knowing that you'll find lots of noisy gears on Märklin locos for a number of reasons:

1° gears don't exhibit a perfect profile. This was especially true in the days where gears were stamped , not machine cut.
It was the years of hit and miss : If your loco was mounted with **all* its gears cut with fresh dies, you'd be lucky and had a fairly quiet loco, but more than often you had at least one imperfect one in the lot, with the corresponding "racket" as a bonus . .
Luckily today, gears are cut accurately and repeatably on automated gear cutting machines, as I was able to witness during several factory tours. And progress is really obvious here.


2° gears are not mounted at the correct Center Distance (which is calculated as 1/2 (D1 +D2) where D1 and D2 are the respective pitch diameter of the two meshing gears.)
That's a rare occurence, but still has happened.

3° the gears' rotational axles are not perfectly parallel .
This can happen simply from a sloppy adjustment between axle and wheel : if they "wiggle" on their axle they'll be noisy!
No exception here.
And it can often be compounded with the rubbing of the wheels against each other or against the motor body.

And that's the one that you can improve with the ball bearing on the motor shaft, at least for the motor's axle.
The rest of the gear train remains unchanged though
Thus, to cure the problem completely, you need to correct the meshing and alignment for **all** the wheels in the gear train.

I have even reworked some gears in old locos, adding an accurately adusted bronze bushing inserted in the gear or even cutting an all new bronze wheel like I did for my MS 800

And one more thing: no amount of "running in" will turn a noisy gear train into a silent one.
A little grease on rubbing surfaces will **temporarily ** improve the situation.

Hope this helps

Jacques

As a follow up to my previous post, the drill alignment tool arrived and I tested it out. There is very little play between the drill bit and the corresponding hole in the tool which needs to be for it to perform it function accurately. Unfortunately because of the design of the Märklin 3032 chassis casting, I couldn't get the tool clamped in a satisfactory position to drill the enlarging hole for the 2mm X 5mm bearing.

So, in the end I just resorted to drilling the hole out manually using my large pin vise. I only went to 4mm and will do the last 1mm using a hand reamer. My plan is to go slowly and remove just a little from each end of the hole until I obtain a snug fit with the 2mm X 5mm bearing.

Chuck

I recently completed my first conversion to ball bearings in a V140 Diesel from the 37203 "Forefathers" set. These are several things I discovered that I like to add to the conversion.

First, like several others here I didn't really notice any real reduction the the noise level. I would agree that any improvement to the motor bearings isn't going to overcome the noise generated by the array of whirilling spur gears in the drivetrain. Oddly enough this is not an annoyance to me. My guess is that I'm used to it and don't really notice anymore. If you're planning on doing this conversion in the hope that you engine is not going to run silently, I think you in for a big disappointment. Do it for the lubricating and commutator dust benefits.

Secondly, when you remove the plastic (delrin?) bearing from the frame side, I went to install the new bearing from the outside and notice it didn't fit because the hole was too small. Upon further investigation by first using my dial caliper to check the outside diameter of the bearing that there is a very small lip on the outside of the bearing hole and the new ball bearing must be installed from the inside (motor armature/anker side).

Lastly, living in the USA where fraction sized drill bits are way more common than metric bits, you only need a metric bit the size required of the finished hole which in this case is 4mm when drilling out the motor shield. You don't need to actually go up 0.5 mm sizes until you reach 4mm. You can use any size drill bit just so long as it's SMALLER than the ending 4mm size. So you don't need to go and buy a complete set of metric drill bits, just the size that you need for the finished hole.

I hope that this is some help to anyone planning to do this conversion.

Chuck

Jaques, you're absolutely right bout "free hand" drilling but I've managed to line up the centre drill in a most perfect position but I don't have any proof as such as it is my eyesight which had determined what is a 90° (brush plate) when it comes to motor block it is more difficult to determine what is a true 90° angle.
I must admit I have had 2 out of line drill experiences but was able to correct it in the end by drilling sideways as the hole I've created was to far away from the first cogwheel, since than I've learned to go as slow as possible and just putting enough pressure on it without shaving away to much and checking from time to time I'm still on the right track.

John