#34's cam

Note to self, before taking apart any more steam engine valve gears and side rods, TAKE A PICTURE!

In the picture below I have the center driver with the cam attached back in the frame and all of the side rods hooked up. It took a while to get the eccentric set properly so the mechanism would not bind. In fact I went to my DVD of 75 years of Model Railroader which Marlene gave me for Christmas to try and determine the proper position for the eccentric. I actually found what I needed online with a pretty good animation.

Once I got the running gear back together and the engine running smoothly I installed the soldering pad which you can see below.

After the silicone setup on the soldering pad I installed the cam wiper and the plug.


Next came attaching the cam input to the plug. (But on my first attempt I managed to attach the headlight lead and not the cam input. So needless to say the cam did not work.) Once I got the proper wire attached to the soldering pad plug the cam started working. However it is somewhat erratic. Sometimes it chuffs twice when it should on chuff once and sometimes it doesn't chuff at all when it should. (Three chuffs per rotation instead of four.) I have adjusted the wiper and I am certain it is making good contact.

Tomorrow I will have to play with this and see if I can get it to settle down and chuff correctly.