A hesitant runner!

Having got one of my Lima Class 117 DMUs out the other day which featured in this post - click here to see that - I thought I really ought to give it a run just to make sure it was OJK before fitting it with a DCC chip. Placing it on the track and turning up some DC power resulted in a somewhat reluctant movement from the DMU. It was then that I seem to recall that the last time I ran this DMU was probably before the pandemic! It now needed some attention to get its decades old mechanism running smoothly again!

First job was to actually get it on the work bench.

Then it was trying to figure out how to get the body off. There were two screws under the chassis which came undone easily but the clips at either end of the body took some locating and undoing but eventually the body was off the car with the motor bogie.

Having got into the body the motor bogie comes out easily. It was very clean so just a few drops of oil on appropriate places was needed.

The wheels were cleaned (being brass they were both dirty and corroded) and the back to back measurements were checked and adjusted.

I then moved onto the trailing bogie which also collects power through one side of the wheels. Again the wheels were dirty and corroded and the back to back measurements needed adjustment.

With that done I put the chassis on my USA switching layout as my dual DC/DCC controller was hooked up to it and performance was restored.

I can now think about fitting that DCC chip!