This is a long story about the destruction and resurrection of 903. A few months ago, I purchased two AZL Nickel Plate Road GP30s on a two-for-one sale at one of the online shops. I'm kind of partial to NKP because I remember them from growing up in Erie, Pa. where the main lines ran across Route 20 from our farm. Anyway, I wanted to go DCC, so I purchased two Digitrax DZ123Z0 drop in boards. As anyone who has AZL GP30s is probably aware, trying to keep the board in place can be a real challenge. Every time something happened to #903, the decoder would pop out and I'd have to take off the shell, jam it back in, put the meter on it to make sure it wasn't shorted, etc. At one point, I smoked one of the decoders in the process of trying to get it to stay. I also need to mention that while trying to get the decoder to stay in place, I broke off one of the tabs that hold it to the frame. So I decided I would solder the motor directly to the board rather than use the built-in contacts. The first thing I did was set the soldering iron too hot and I burned the wires completely back to the inside of the motor. At this point I had a destroyed motor, broken frame holddown and smoked decoder. While removing the broken motor, I also broke the plastic housing/bracket that holds the motor in place in the frame. With all the manhandling of the frame, eventually one of the pickup strips broke off. AZL told one of the online sellers of their products that they don't have spare motors to sell, so I assumed I now had a piece of locomotive scenery for the layout. But then someone mentioned Tramfabriek and I found they had a 7 x 16 motor available. The AZL specifications say the GP30 has a 7.5 x 16 but I decided a half a millimeter wouldn't stop me. Next I had to design and 3D print a new bracket/housing to hold the new motor when it arrived. I had to do a different design because when I attempted to mirror the original part, the 3d print was too fragile. Next in line was to buy a micro gear puller to get the flywheels off the old motor. No problem there. But putting them on the new motor wasn't error free. I tried to use my drill press to press the flywheels on and (as you suspected) I bent the shaft a bit. It still ran but was a touch wobbly. Soldering the leads from the motor to the encoder went without issue. I drilled a tiny hole and screwed a piece of the broken pickup strip as a hold down for the decoder. Finally, everything was put back together and the 903 was placed on the track with new motor, new decoder, new motor mount and new pickups. And it ran like crap. Sometimes it wouldn't move at all. Sometimes it would run extremely slow. Sometimes it ran okay in reverse but not forward. Sometimes after running for 20 minutes or so it would seem like it was running fine. Finally, tonight, I decided to do one last try. I took everything apart used a file to make a little more room in the frame for the flywheels. Afterall, my my 3d printed motor bracket was probably offsize enough to cause the flywheels to contact the frame. Then I decided to work on straightening that bent motor shaft. You couldn't see the wobble moving the motor by hand, but when it was hooked to power, it was obvious that it was off. I didn't think bending it with a pair of pliers was going to work, but lo and behold, I got it reasonably straight. So I put it all back together, put it on the track and turned on the power. It ran. It ran well. It ran well in forward and reverse. Probably when I try to run it tomorrow, it won't do anything but for tonight we're marking this one as a W. If it really is resurrected, I'm going to nickname 903 Perseverance. And I did learn a lot.
CONGRATULATIONS! on resurrecting the 903. These little locos can be a challenge sometimes. I've resurrected several locos from each of the current manufacturers. I've replaced the 3-pole and 5-pole motors in Marklin locos with the new "Bell-shaped armature" motors. swapped running gear and wheelsets and moved PC boards from one model of a loco to another model. It's always satisfying to see a "dead" loco running again.
cj, Good story and I like your perseverance. I can be pretty frustrating set backs build up. Congrats on the W! Scott
