The can motor powering the Shorty is a 7 mm can approximately 17mm long (Can) and approximately 24mm overall End of gear to end of Can Here is a picture of one that i took apart. Their is a ton of potential for models that a modified shorty chassis could power. I'm going to have to fabricate my own mounts but the motor and drive truck fit with room to spare.
They are cheap enough to splice 2 drive halves for dual motor drive in a switcher, then use the power pickup trucks and make a lighted caboose or something.
Needed dimensions from old projects. Sky is limit with Shorty. Go for it. Note: First post, still learning way around. Jerry
This one I did three years ago painted but put the walkways on it so the inside space isn't wide enough I would have to re design and take the walkways off to fit the Shortie GE-44 tonner
Making the shorty a little smaller Their is still a fair amount of the original chassis that i plan to trim away but i want to add a few reinforcing strips at the new mounting location first to help maintain proper motor and gear alignment.
Finally received mine today! I noticed it runs best with the powered trucks leading the way. So excited to see all the projects develop - great offering from Rokuhan at a very affordable price!
I just got mine in the mail. Does anyone know the max voltage for these little guys? It runs VERY fast with my 9 volt PWM throttle. All my other engines crawl with this same throttle.
Haven't got one myself yet, but from a fellow boardmember here over in Belgium, I got a 3.5 mm diameter passed on. Can anyone confirm? Matt
That is excellent! Thanks to Mark for the excellent review and Chris for the link! The wheels come in at about 24 1/2" Nn3 or 34" Z. That's pretty small. Too bad about the speed but it seems to throttle down tolerably.
Got mine... Looks like it will fit the bill for a lot of smaller switchers. The truck wheelbase is right about the same for SW switchers and some Plymouth locomotives and some other odd ducks that would be interesting to power. Only problem I see using it on an SW series switcher or larger locomotives is the wheel diameter. 34" is quite a bit smaller than 40" Diameter on a SW switcher. Same goes for the Ingersoll Rand box cab locomotives that used 40" diameter wheels. For PCC trolleys, 34" wheels with power is probably the smallest diameter wheel you can power with gears and still get effective gear reduction to pull anything. Still a bit off from PCC's 26" Diameter wheels. Wheel base on the trucks is quite a bit off too by about 2 feet (PCC's 6 feet to Rokuhan's 8 feet). So it might look grossly out of scale. PCC's also do not have an outside side frame on the trucks, they ride on the inside of the axle. So the outside side frame might look out of place too. -Jon
Concerning the small wheels, I managed to replace the Rokuhan wheels with MTL SD40-2 40” wheels. I had to chop the gear axle just a bit, drill a bigger hole, and trim out some plastic from truck to fit. However, the gears meshed perfectly and the wheels rolled freely. I wish I had more MTL wheels laying around. I’m very hesitant to take apart one of my AZL trucks to test those wheels out. EDIT: I forgot to mention that the electrical pickup worked just fine with the MTL wheels.
Many of the later AZL locos came with a separate (alternate) 3 axle truck. Lots of sacrificial sources now.
My Designed PCC with the Shortie and you can see the wheel base! it's a tight fit width wise I need to add a 1/32" to it and it would fit with a hair of play! right now pushing the shortie inside the side bulge out a bit! the wheel base needs to be wider to! but the powermax fit really good! Would need to connect the two unit together to space the wheels as they should!