V60: The next victim

This is the ubiquitous Maerklin 3065, DB number 260 417-1 a first generation switcher for light and medium duty switching,  as well as light transfer freights. This is my next victim for conversion to digital. I'm doing this one differently than all the other conversions so far. The motor in this locomotive is awful and the gears are super-noisy. Two years ago I ordered a re-motor kit from SB Modellbau that fits this locomotive. It consists of a small Maxon DC motor, and adapter gears to fit into the Maerklin drive-train. This promises a much smoother running engine and I heard many good things about the SB Modellbau motor kits.

Before I start...

The only catch is that doing this conversion requires extensive modification of the motor block, thus the kit is labeled as "difficult" on the SB Modellbau Web site. "There is no difficult", I thought and ordered the kit.

I've never done a conversion like this before. You can send the parts to SB Modellbau to have the milling done professionally for a fee, but I wanted to try myself.

Today I worked up the courage to start grinding away the motor block with a cut-off disk in the Dremel and working out the more intricate bits with a milling bit. The zinc metal is relatively soft, so a fresh cut-off disk worked very well. The milling bit is a bit harder to control, but manageable at low speed setting. I used painters tape to keep the metal shavings away from gears and wheels as much as possible.

Halfway done.

Milling complete

The motor fits almost perfectly

So far, so good.

A couple days later I did the first test run.