DJ Models 14xx on High Level chassis
Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2018 7:06 pm
Hello everyone welcome to my first posting on the Forum, please bear with me while I get used to the intricacies of BB Code – can’t be more difficult than persuading wheels not to be wobbly, can it??
As a break from various recent adventures with green diesels, over the last few months I’ve been idly building a High Level 14xx chassis in an attempt to hone the personal skills in P4 steam loco chassis construction. So far, so relatively straightforward, given the quality of the kit and the excellent instructions. But then something must have come over me as I decided to have a go at fitting the body from the DJ Models 00 loco onto the chassis as built. This is a record for fellow modellers of what followed….
Unlike many earlier steam outline models, the DJ Models body is made up of several main components, and it is necessary to take these apart in order to modify the body to provide room for the motor supplied with the chassis. The good news is that very little modification to the chassis is required to get the two to fit together. The slightly less good news is that dismantling and modifying the body is not entirely straightforward, so here are some of the experiences I had so you can make use of what I learned the hard way!
I don’t use DCC myself so I discarded the DCC socket and associated wiring to make it simpler to fit the body but I don’t see why this shouldn’t be retained – do feel free to add a comment if you succeed in doing this.
Dismantling the Body
We start with the 00 model out of the box. We can take the body apart by following some simple steps but as can happen with these things there does come a point where we have to be brave and apply a little bit of force (just the right amount in just the right place!!); with luck you’ll find it fairly straightforward having the benefit of the illustrations below.
To give you an idea where we’re going on this, here are the major components (tanks and footplate as modified to suit the chassis, cab roof and boiler don’t need to be modified).
So let’s take a deep breath, put the soothing music on (or whatever else helps to manage the blood pressure) and start dismantling the locomotive:
1. Unscrew the tension lock couplings and take off the D shaped brackets
2. Undo the screws underneath the couplings and in the centre of the chassis (3 screws in total)
3. Disconnect the front vacuum pipe by levering out gently with eg snipe nosed pliers – until this is done the front part of the chassis is held down by this pipe
4. Move aside the front sandpipes to leave room for the chassis to come out
5. Pull out the injector pipes from the rear of the chassis (they are fitted in the centre of a rectangular area which is part of the chassis).
6. Using two or more small screwdrivers carefully lever out the chassis noting that although it will come away it is still connected to the body by the wiring. This is the part where you just have to guess the right amount of force to apply.
7. Unsolder the two wires to separate the chassis from the body. You will find that the motor is retained within the body – to get this out, we have to take the cab/tanks off together with the boiler assembly.
8. Undo the screw under the chimney (on the right in the above picture) – the boiler will now come loose but not free yet – see below.
9. Take the coal out by levering at the middle of the bunker edge – the coal should come out easily
10. Undo the two screws inside the coal bunker at the bottom. These hold the cab to the footplate and also secure the cab roof subassembly to the cab sides and tanks.
11. Pull out the vertical wire on the right hand side of the cab from where it is located in the footplate
12. The cab should now come partly free from the footplate but note it is held by a delicate wire at the front- pull this wire carefully out of the black junction box
13. Carefully lift off the cab and tanks so you can get to at the screws holding down the Mazak block underneath the tank. You’ll see from the photo I hadn’t worked out at the time how to pull the wire out of the junction box as per step 12 so I was having to do one side at a time. Undo the screws and remove the block.
14. Now undo the two silver screws holding the motor down, unclip the motor and withdraw it from its housing
15. Unclip the handrail from the cab roof
16. Now we want to detach the cab roof from the cab sides and tanks unit. As you can see from the above picture, apart from being held down by the two screws we removed earlier, the cab roof is held in place by a tab (upper right). Inside the tank, push on this tab (note this is the one in the middle, ignore the two stubby tabs for the moment), and the cab roof should come off smoothly.
17. You can now push on the stubby tabs and lift out the boiler/firebox subassembly
18. Take off the smokebox door by very gently levering behind the hinges (the door is designed to be removable and is only held by two magnets).
19. Withdraw the DCC socket from the smokebox by pushing it into the boiler. This will free all the remaining wiring plus the motor. If you wish to use DCC you may want to retain the socket and wire it into the new motor later
20. Drill out the plastic lug holding a second Mazak weight inside the boiler. Admire the rather nice dome shape on the weight before binning it.
21. This completes the dismantling.
Modifications to the Body and Chassis
I decided to make the fundamental assumption that I would try very hard not to modify the chassis (that way if it all went horribly wrong I could go back to the Airfix/Hornby body!!). In fact the only thing I ended up having to do, apart from adding mounting brackets to secure the new body, was to file down a U-shaped bracket designed to support the Airfix cab (see details below). Fortunately, it was possible to do this after I had built the chassis.
So, build the chassis according to the High Level instructions, but when you come to fit the pickups use your favourite method (I used the curly flange wiper method as you can see) but try very hard not to end up having wiring above the top of the chassis as this is likely to make it much harder to fit the body. How do I know?? After many adventures I ended up using the “power bus” method with thick longitudinal wires underneath the chassis as can be seen above.
Now for the surgery on the body. Carefully form a hole using your usual approach (minidrill plus filing or whatever) 11.5mm by 33m in the top of the tanks to provide clearance for the Mashima motor used by the High Level chassis. Chamfer underneath at an angle of about 30-40 degrees to the horizontal to give maximum room for the motor to move.
Now cut a slot about 5mm wide in the rear wall of the tank unit to provide clearance for the wiring and solder tags on the motor. Remove the green boss which was used to hold the middle chassis fixing screw and file the area under the cab flat. We will be providing new fixing points at the ends of the chassis but the centre fixing point isn’t really necessary.
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On the footplate, carefully cut away the red inside motion panel (hole must be no wider than the representation of the motion as we’re using this to create a view of the High Level inside motion you have painstakingly constructed). Cut away the footplate in the middle and at the cab end to create a larger hole as shown in the above picture. Keep checking against the boiler and the cab sides/tanks unit to make sure you don’t cut away too much, and test regularly against the chassis to make sure you cut away just enough.
At the cab end of the footplate, carefully break away the axlebox subframes and clean up.
Now for the fiddly part. Cut slots in the underneath of the footplate to accept the High Level chassis (four longitudinal slots and one transverse slot), so that the body can sit level on the chassis with the cab (green plastic) tight up against the top of the chassis. You will have to file off the back of the black boss for the chassis securing screw to do this but make sure you keep the thread intact as we will need this to secure the chassis.
At the smokebox end of the footplate, carefully break off the sandboxes and file away any remains to give a flat surface which again should fit snugly against the top of the chassis.
File the back of the smokebox saddle to fit against the motion bracket on the chassis, noting that the motion bracket is fitted at an angle of about 10 degrees to the vertical so we need to file the smokebox saddle to the same angle.
Keep filing until the footplate fits snugly against the chassis – this is likely to take quite a few attempts till things are satisfactory.
I now fashioned a couple of securing brackets from unwanted OO parts from the High Level nickel silver etch and soldered these on to the chassis, one at each end, in such a way as to allow the existing bushed screwholes underneath the footplate to be used. To get this method to work you will need to file down the heads of the DJ Models screws (especially at the cab end) so they don’t catch on the cross member at each end of the High Level chassis.
Modify the chassis to add the securing brackets, file down the transverse U channel across the top of the chassis at the cab end (part 59 on High Level instructions) so that the cab floor will be able to fit.
Ensure (a) the footplate then (b) the cab/tanks subassembly will fit snugly against the chassis before going any further - this is likely to take quite a few attempts till things are satisfactory. Check the buffer heights at each end and either file the footplate a little more or, if necessary, adjust the chassis according to the High Level instructions.
Now reassemble the body with the footplate away from the chassis. Fit the cab sides/tanks to the footplate and add the boiler/firebox unit, securing it with the screw under the smokebox. Lower the cab roof into place and secure with the two screws in the coal space. Replace the coal and the smokebox and refit any handrails, pipework and any wiring you had to disturb to get the body to pieces. Finally reattach the chassis and check everything still works.
All being well you should now have a complete locomotive which runs happily up and down the track. I haven’t done anything about additional weighting yet but there seem to be opportunities to add weight in the smokebox, the tanks and the coal space, depending on what you plan to do about DCC.
While I think of it, I would like to thank Chris Gibbon of High Level kits for checking out the completed chassis and also the members of the P4 group of the Farnham MRC for their support and encouragement in advancing the P4 modelling skills. Thanks guys!!
Meanwhile, has anyone else out there tried this? Any suggestions on how to make things easier or refine the method to produce a better result?