Gunk everywhere

[AhmadKane]

I've gotten some time on my hands and have been servicing a used loco I found in the Indonesian Ebay. 

 

Gunk everywhere, pisses me off. Had to open the ringfield motor and clean everything up. I got around 20 cotton buds cleaning the gunk and black grease. It's running smoother now since I've cleaned the pickups and the motor. 

 

But in the inner arches of the wheels come hard gunk sitting there and collecting itself in the centre and the edges. I don't have a small cottonbud tonight, so I was wondering whether I should, or are there ways to clean this

 

Thanks in advance

 

Kane

[roadstar_na6]

Ultrasonic bath

 

And this

Edited November 10, 2020 by roadstar_na6

[AhmadKane]

20 minutes ago, roadstar_na6 said:

Ultrasonic bath

 

And this

 

Ultrasonic bath eh? Got any cheaper alternative? lol

 

Also i really want to convert the motor, but the model isn't worth the hassle. I'm considering to do it on an old hornby

[chadbag]

Yes, Ultrasonic bath.   90% Isopropyl works pretty well and you can get cheapo Ultrasonic cleaners from the various China online marts.

Edited November 10, 2020 by chadbag

[chadbag]

24 minutes ago, AhmadKane said:

 

Ultrasonic bath eh? Got any cheaper alternative? lol

 

Also i really want to convert the motor, but the model isn't worth the hassle. I'm considering to do it on an old hornby

 

A cheap Chinese ultrasonic cleaner is useful for a lot of things and you will probably end up using it more than you think.

[cteno4]

I strongly second this, a little 30-40w ultrasonic bath is one of the most useful tools and investments you can have for your trains. Think of it being a long term investment tha will end costing you a couple of dollars a year (unless you are planning on leaving the hobby soon)

 

a cheap 30-40w plugin model is like $20-30 and will do the job. The $5-10 battery or usb operated ones don’t do much at all than buzz.

 

The “cheap” alternative is to totally strip the mech apart as far as you can and hand clean every single part. it can be difficult to do the same job by hand as you end up having to tear everything apart to scrub gunk out every nook and cranny on every part. Doing this on a steam loco can be quite challenging and runs the risk of damage during complete disassembly or reassembling it. Also some assemblies just don’t come apart. Even with disassembling parts it can be hard to get gears and such really clean with out really tedious scrubbing. With the ultrasonic bath you can usually clean up assemblies like trucks w/o tearing them apart. Usually you have to dump the cleaner and run again if really dirty, I just repeat it until the cloud of dark stuff stops coming out, then do a rinse bath of water then a quick 70% isopropanol to dry it out. Only once in a great while do I end up having to strip things down totally. Usually that with hairs and fibers that the ultrasonic bath may loosen, but won’t force them out. You cna sometime pick the loosened and debunked hairs out with some fine tweezers but at times it just has to come apart to pull out all the hairs and fibers.
 

definitely worth the fraction of the cost of a train set to keep up your whole fleet in the long run.

 

if you want to be cheap be prepared to spend a lot of time and effort and maybe break something until you get enough experience completely stripping things down. There are some hidden costs to the cheap route.

 

jeff