The second part of the building report of the Stadtwerke bus. In the previous part I described the lights, this time the mechanics.
The floor of a Rietze bus is prepared to make room for the battery holder. The chair stands are cut of with a knife. In the end some of the chairs will be but back including some passengers.
A nice fit. This is a double AAA holder. You will have to do some searching to find this at a reasonable price. I have seen prices up to € 4,50. This one costs € 0,35.
The holder does not hold very well with glue. I needed two extra strips to get some structural strength. I also sanded the bottom of the holder. It was not not completely flat.
Next was the steering mechanism. This is a difficult job. It takes a lot of time to rebuild a support structure. The extra room needed for the steering arm got me into trouble. The floor is not in two pieces. In the end I decided to glue the front to the cover, the back end is removable.
See the extra room you will need for the steering wheels.
It is very important to get the wheels exactly on the same place as they used to be with the static axle. This is why I leave the original support. Later I made some extra room to prevent friction.
Here you can see the charger plug and the micro switch.
Just checking if the gear and motor will not hit the ground.
Extra support on the front
batteries are connected to the charger plug and micro switch. First three are for charging. The connections are earth, plus, earth. It does not matter how you connect the charger, it cannot be polarised wrongly. The send three are from the switch. if in the left postition it connects the battery to the charger, in the right position it connects the battery to the decoder. There is no way to connect the charger to the decoder. Remember the Geest #3 truck?
A second precaution is to add a small fuse in between the red wire and the switch. This is not done in this bus.
If you look for a fuse, remember that i should allow for charging too. In my case you will need at least a 1000 mA fuse.
The decoder will be in this same spot too. All the cables from the cover end up here too.
