Basic Disassembly And Maintenance - Lionel Plastic "Scout" Motors - It CAN Be Done!

Over the years, Lionel's Plastic Steam Locomotive Scout Type Motors have developed a reputation of being weak, unreliable, and nearly impossible to work on. Let's examine these motors today and find out the truth about Lionel's Plastic Motors. Today we're going to try something really crazy, 23.9, close enough. These are very close to true O scale. You don't want to try this with a modern transformer. So this is based off of a real B&O caboose from 1916 up to 1938. That is not helpful. Now it is truth or consequences time. Part of the circuit is running through this wire arm here. Very simple but effective animation for the layout. Hello again, this is Mike from Toy Train Tips and Tricks, and today we are looking at Lionel's Plastic Scout Type Steam Locomotive Motors. In a previous video, you saw that I had won a 1951-52 Scout Set, complete set, from eBay. I spent a whopping $20 on the entire set, and I'd been cleaning it up appropriately, all of the cars, and now I'm getting to the locomotive. So while the engine runs, we want to look at what can I do, one, to make it run better. What can you do if you run across one of these? Are these worth your time? And again, there's a reputation on these that these are pretty much disposable because they're very, very difficult to work on. Well, let's take a look at it and let's see how difficult it is in reality to work on. Is this something that the average hobbyist can tackle? So we'll take one apart, we'll take this one apart, and we'll see what we've got. Now, how do you know if you've got a plastic scout type motor? And the dead giveaway is this switch right here. This plastic fiber type switch indicates that you have a plastic case motor inside this locomotive. If you're not familiar with the model numbers and that, this is the clue, this switch right here. The traditional metal frame motor will have a regular E-unit that has a switch either that comes out the bottom or sometimes comes out through a slot at the top of the boiler. But in either case, you're going to have this metal slot. Now, this body style has also been used in modern locomotives with a can motor. In that case, also, you will not have a switch. You'll have an electronic reversing board on the inside. But it's pretty easy to tell whether you have a modern can-motored version or the post-war slash MPC type. Now, the plastic motors first came out in 1948 on the 1001 locomotive built for Lionel's Scout Line. Now, the Scouts were intended to go after the budget-minded families. These were to compete directly with Marks. Not so much with the Marks low end, because Lionel really couldn't compete with that. The, you know, bargain basement Marks trains that had no reversing unit and locomotives were tin lithography, those were so inexpensive to produce. Lionel really didn't want to go there. But with Lionel's more detailed locomotives, these drives, they were going after more of the mid-range of the Marks line with operating couplers and reversing units. So, to reduce costs, first of all, they stripped out as many details as possible. Although some of the stuff is still here. Like, for example, if you wanted to add the ornamental bell, right there's the slot on the boiler casting. Or if you wanted to get one, you could put one on there. Likewise, while this came with a headlight, it did not come with a headlight lens. But luckily, this part is easily available. As a matter of fact, I take this one came out of a 1970s era plastic boiler model that the boiler was split in pieces. I'm never going to be able to use it for running anymore. But I took this out and look, it is a perfect fit. So all I have to do is glue that in place and I've got a headlight lens. So, you're looking for this part right here. On the outside, the other big difference is how the shell attaches to the motor. On the metallic, the metal-framed motors, almost always this screw right here goes through the top of the boiler and that holds the shell on. In the case of the plastic bodies, there is a very long screw right here that goes through the motor and out the other side. And when we take this apart, we're going to take a look at that and how that comes apart and take that apart. Now let's take a look at it running and see what the characteristics are. Okay, so when my Scout locomotive first arrived, it was filthy. I took it out of the box. The wheels were dirty. The contacts were dirty. And so this is the first thing that you can do with one of these plastic motors that does not require disassembly. There we go. To help the performance. Very important to have the wheels clean and have these pickup contacts clean. So in this case, there was a band of gunk. It was almost like a traction tire of oil and dirt that had accumulated over seven decades. And for that, I took a Dremel with a wire brush and went around all of the wheels to get that off. I did the same thing for the front truck and the rear truck. Then for the copper contacts, I did use the wire briefly, but mainly I just took just a little bit of some cleaning solution and rubbed on there. And got those shiny, nice and shiny. Now, as far as what solution to use, lots of people have their own favorites. Just make sure on these that whatever you use is plastic compatible because this whole motor casing is plastic. But just that made a big difference in the performance. Also, what you can do, obviously you can see these gears. So make sure you get a good coating of plastic compatible hobby grease on those. And the other thing that you will make sure you want to put some oil right here, that little dot there, that is the armature where the motor goes through there. And you really can't see it on this side. On this side, it is enclosed. Get some oil on there to make sure that your motor armature spins freely. So clean the wheels, oil it. That's step one. Anybody can do that. You don't have to take anything apart. And usually that will make some improvement in your performance. So I've done that. Let's take a look at what she does. Okay, so I've made my poor man's test stand here. I just threw a couple of screw boxes underneath it to get the driving wheels up off of the table. And I've direct wired it. I've got one wire going straight to the copper contacts underneath. The second wire is actually grounding it through the draw bar. So let's turn it on here. And you see one of the problems with these is the reversing unit likes to jam up. So there we go. Now we've got some power to it. And you see it goes pretty fast. And let's crank it down. Reducing, reducing, reducing. About half throttle there. And it starts to die. Let's keep going the other direction. There we go. Okay, so that is about half throttle. That's around seven or eight volts. So it will go on these slower speeds. But you hear how loud it is even at these slow speeds. This is a common trait of the plastic motors. And it has to do with how the reverse mechanism in these works. Let me turn this off a second. On a regular metal motor, the electronic e-unit handles the direction change. In here, inside these coils, is a solenoid. And there is a rotating drum. When you turn the power on, the solenoid pulls a little plunger that rotates the drum one position. There are fingers on the drum with wires that go to different spots on the motor that change the orientation of the wires to the motor field. So that you can get forward, neutral, reverse, neutral, forward, and so on as the drum spins. This had worked quite well since the 1920s. But Lionel wanted a less expensive way of doing this for the Scout locomotives. So the plastic locomotives, hold on a wire here, do not have an electronic reversing unit. What they have with this mechanism is, it's actually a two-piece motor. And there is a spring that attaches to a pawl and a set of gears that does two things. It uses the electrical field of the motor itself to pull the pawl, rotate the two sides of the motor and the orientation of the motor brushes through a gear system. And that engages and changes the orientation of the brushes and the wires and the motor field electrically so that it can go forward, reverse, forward, reverse, forward, reverse. And there's a spring that brings it back and gets it ready for the next cycle. So instead of using a separate electronic unit, it uses the motor field itself to pull the pawl which rotates the gears and keeps it engaged in forward or reverse. This combined with the plastic casing makes these very loud. So part of that is inherent in using the motor field as the reversing mechanism. To show this, I'm going to wire this up. I'm going to switch this over to a DC transformer. And by taking away the alternating current, it's going to change the way the motor field works. And what you'll see is this locomotive will operate as if the reversing mechanism is disconnected. But you'll notice that it's a lot quieter. Okay, so here it is on DC current. And now you notice it is quite a bit quieter. I also have better low-speed control. That's typical with running these on DC current. And yeah, I can still crank it up. But now what I'm hearing is just the sound of the motor and gears themselves. And so one, it sounds like my gears are a little dry. And secondly, I'm hearing a sound that tells me that there's significant arcing going on inside the motor. That's most likely due to dirty brushes or common commutator phase. And on a seven-decade-old locomotive, that's not surprising. Another clue to that is if we take a look at the headlight. There we go, my wire was loose. Okay, let me put the headlight lens in. It'll make it a little easier to see. But what's happening is the headlight gets its power after the motor. And so you see a bit. It's not too bad, but we're getting some headlight flicker. Getting a little bit of headlight flicker, which is indicative that there's stuff going on inside the motor affecting the voltage coming out before it gets to the headlight. This is more pronounced when I'm running on the AC power than the DC. But it does tell me that there's... Brushes are a little dirty. Maybe somebody's been in there before and cleaned it out a little bit. All the way, there we go. So we do need to take this apart and probably clean it a little bit. So let's take a look at how we do that. All right, step one right here is, whoops, right there is the rod that runs through the locomotive and holds part of the shell on. So we are going to loosen that. And once it gets to a certain point, it probably needs some help getting out. So we're going to pop to the other side and push. And there it comes. So there is the rod that holds the shell and the motor together. I'm going to put that in my magnetic parts tray. And then we need to do a little bit of work here on... In order to get the rest of the way off, we need to take the side rods off. And so let me show you how to do that. OK, I've got a 1 1⁄4 inch socket. And yes, you can attach this to a socket wrench or a drill. But these, I know because I've already taken this apart, aren't in there super tight. I can do it by hand. Get a 1 1⁄4 inch socket. Take the rest off by hand. And then your side rod pulls right off. And then repeat for the other side. So far, taking this apart is just the same. But other than that rod doing the side rods, this part is exactly the same as all of the metal motored Scout 242s. They are assembled the same way, which makes a lot of these parts interchangeable, which is good. So pull the side rod out. And there's that. OK, next, to fully access the motor, we have two screws to remove. Let me show you right here. There and there. That will take this part off and that is attached to the front part of the motor. So when we remove these, we can pop the front wheel off and that will allow us to pull the rest of the motor out free and clear. And this, again, is identical to the way it would be in a metal motored Scout. We always keep the tools close. There we go. Loosen that one. OK. Everything's straight out. And the rear wheel just pops right off. Get our screws. Boom. Put all that in my magnetic tray. I'm going to set the shell aside and my front and rear wheels. And now we have the motor assembly. I've already taken this apart once and I replaced the headlight. This is the original on these. This is a very common automotive bulb that's still made today. This is a GE number 51 automotive bulb with a bayonet mount. You can find these at most auto parts stores or you can order them from Meinl parts dealers as well. Now, this one also shows some signs that somewhere over the years it was dropped probably multiple times because this on both sides, there's a little plastic nub here. This is where our long bolt goes through. And you can see there's significant damage to the plastic there. So when I'm done reassembling, what that does is that nudges right up against the shell to help keep it from vibrating side to side. That adds to our noise problem. So I'm going to put some little rubber gaskets on there when I'm all done with this. But in any case, here we have the plastic motor. It's all self-contained and really you can't get too much as it is. You see where the pickups are and the gears and the headlight. You have no access to the brushes or the armature. And you see this is a two-piece. So this half and this half rotate against one another. So what happens here as you can see a little movement here, whether that's in the lock-in position to disable the gears. But here the motor field pulls against a pawl and gear system in here, which changes the orientation of the brushes in here and the electrical connections to change the orientation of the motor field. And that's how this one works. So taking the shell off doesn't get you much other than access to the light bulb. There's nothing else you can get in here to clean or oil or lubricate. Everything else is self-contained. Now on the metal motored Scouts, this is the basic design they used from the 1930s up until they switched to the can motor. You've got your reversing unit in the back, whether it stemmed down like this one. This is a number 250 from the mid-1950s or stem up more common. You've got your brush plate here. You just unscrew this, pop out. You have access to your brushes, your armatures under here. You can get under there and clean it. And if you have a headlight and a smoke unit, it's going to go on this end. And that's the basic motor. And you can pretty much see that you can access anything that you need to access here. All of the gears, like I said, you can pop in here, get at the armature and the brushes. On this one, because it's more complicated, it's harder to get to. Which leads me to my dilemma on this one. It runs okay, but it is showing signs that it could use some cleaning on the brushes and commutator. So the question is, do I really want to open it up and take a look? And so on one hand, I could say, well, I only paid $20 for the whole set. I can run it till it dies and then do it when it really needs it. And then if I mess it up, it's no big deal. Or in the name of science and research, I can say, you know, I only paid $20 for the whole set anyway. If I mess it up, I'm not out much. Let's open her up and see for all of you out in YouTube land, see what's in there so that you know if you want to do this or not. And so that's the route that I've taken. So next we are going to access the brushes. This is level two of the three levels of maintenance on the plastic motored scalps. So what we're going to do is we're going to remove this screw and this screw, pop this housing out, and we will see the brushes and part of the reverse mechanism and the gears and pawl and spring all involved with that. So let's wish me luck that I'll be able to get all this back together and let's walk through it together. Okay, so now it is truth or consequences time. I am going to remove these screws so that we can take a look at what we find here with the brushes and how this mechanism works. So on the repair of these, this would be level two in difficulty. Level one was just cleaning and basic cleaning and lubing. There we go, that's one. I'm pulling in here because I know there's a spring in here and I just want to make sure, not having done this before, I want to make sure that nothing is popping out of here like a jack-in-the-box when I'm loosening these screws because then I'll be in a world of hurt. Okay, so we're loose. I'm going to put that on my magnetic parts tray so it doesn't fly away. Same with this one. Let's open up the case and see what we can see. There we go. All right, so what we have here and these are a lot cleaner than I was expecting them to be. This is the brush covers on the plastic locomotive. Now, first thing you'll notice is we've got these metal rings around each one and these look pretty clean. Maybe somebody did service this thing. And so as the reversing mechanism with the pawl, as it changes things around, it will rotate these brush holders and the electrical connections between the brushes and the motor field will change. So notice that we are in opposite positions. When this one would be on, this one is in the neutral position. So you don't want them directly the same as each other. You want them opposite. You'll also notice if you look down here past that, we've got this plastic gearing. So that's how it rotates. There's also a little spring. Let me see if I can adjust this a little bit so we can get down in here. Okay. And you see the spring here on the bottom. Very important that stays in place. Up here is our metal contacts. Okay. So the brushes themselves are underneath these. And so that's floating there on the face of the commutator. And so that's what it looks like in here. Okay. So I'm going to start with the one here on the left. I'm going to pop that puppy out. We'll take a look at the brush. I'm only going to do one at a time. That's going to make it easier to put them back in in the right position. All right. So as I was saying, these are a lot cleaner than I was expecting to find them. So someone somewhere over the 70 years that this thing has been in existence, someone has been in here and cleaned this puppy up. I'm going to try to grab it here with these needle nose if I can get a good grip. I'll pull one up and hold the other down. I don't want to take them both out at the same time because I want to make sure I get them back in. There we go. The way it came out. So you see it kind of sprung all over. That's one of the other reasons why I wanted everything to stay as much as possible in one piece. So here's the other side. And yeah, that looks pretty clean. There's a little bit right around the bottom rim, a little bit of scoring. That looks pretty good. So somebody's been in here and cleaned this puppy out. And so we have the spring here and you see that's where the brush is. And again, the brush looks pretty good. Just a little bit on the tip. I might clean that up, but the condition that these are in, I'm probably going to let it be and not deal with the second one. And let's take a look in here. You can now finally actually see the face of the commutator way down in there. You can actually see the copper base of the commutator. And again, that looks pretty clean. So clearly somebody has serviced this puppy somewhere over the years and they got in pretty good shape. So this is going to be about as good as it gets as far as operation and cleanliness. So while I've got it apart here, I am going to take that one brush, clean it up a little bit. I may take a Q-tip and stick down in there and try to clean the commutator face a little bit. But then putting it back together and we'll be ready to roll. Okay, so here's where we are now. While I had it apart, well, the spring popped while I was looking around with it. And so I needed to take the brush off the other side too, just because things were not going to go back together right. You see, I've got the commutator face. It's pretty shiny. Not bad for not being able to take it out of there. So what I did was I took some cotton swabs, just sprayed the tip with some plastic safe electrical contact cleaner. I use this stuff, it's plastic safe. Just sprayed the tip and then stick the tip down in there. It cleans out the brush wells and you can also put it against the commutator. Use a few of those till it starts coming out clean. And then, just like you would with any other vinyl motor, as you see, spins AC, little slots. There's going to be three of them. And so for those, I took a little toothpick and went down there and just cleaned out those slots because a lot of gunk and grime accumulates there. So that's about as clean as we're going to get it without being able to take the armature out and clean the commutator that way. And if I wanted to do that, you're going to have to take the motor completely apart. For that, you need a wheel puller, which I do not have. And that gets really complicated because now you've got more springs and more cams and things and that would be a level three, but more like, you know, level 10 with the tools and stuff you would need to pull off that. So while I've got it apart, I'm also going to put a little dab of oil right there. Hard to do this with me and the camera in a different spot. Right there, that is my shaft, my motor bearing shaft. So I'm going to put just a little dot of oil on that before I reassemble everything. So I'll see you at reassembly. Okay, the first trick to reassembly is these top and bottom springs right here. And you really can't see, but in the middle of the spring, there is a little bitty hole and both the top and bottom, there's this right here. There's this little bitty tab and the trick is to get the spring, the hole in the spring to sit in that tab and not fall out while you were doing the work. And so that is the tricky part. That's what I'm working on right now. Okay, so now I have the springs pretty much where they go. The top one is in position, but not in its slot. After cleaning the brushes, same way I cleaned the commutator face, I've got the brushes in, the brush goes up against the commutator. So the spring side goes up. And so now it's going to be time to put these puppies back in. And they are not the same. And also we want to have them opposite. So I remember I have a manual on this and one side has little tabs that point down and the other side doesn't. And I need to check my manual to see which one is which. So if you're going to do much work with post-war Lionel trains at all, I highly recommend this book, Complete Service Manual published by K-Line years ago. It has, basically it's a compilation of Lionel service manuals from the post-war period. And lookie right here, the Lionel Scout Motor. And right here is where it tells me what I need to know. One moment. Okay, and here's my answer. If you look right here at the green gears, on the one that goes on the right brush holder, these have pointed tips. On the left-hand side, they have blunt tips. So that's the difference. So this one is right. This one is left. All right. And let's do the reassembly. Okay. And it always pays to read instructions. The instructions say to put the brush holders in first and then do the springs. So I'm going to try that. But again, you see the important part is that if you look here in the middle, I have it so that, line this up with the camera. There we go. So that the metal contact is opposite the blank side. You don't want them lined up together. You want them opposite. So now that that is together, now I'm going to put the spring in the top and the bottom. Okay, so I've got the springs back together. Honestly, so far the most difficult part of this whole process, for me anyway, has been getting these little springs to stay put. That's why I'm still holding it across with the screwdriver here. Maybe it's because my eyes are old and my fingers are fat. But that seems to be the hardest part. So I'm going to hold this here. And before I put the plate back on, we're going to engage. And I don't know if you could see that, but as I spun, and it popped back off. As I engage this, the brushes should move. I don't know if you're going to be able to see this or not between my fat fingers, but if it's doing that, there you go. Then we've got them back together properly. Okay, so if you can see that the brushes are spinning, I hope you can see that as I pull that. So it should be together properly. I'm going to hold it here. I'm going to put the brush plate back on here quickly before my springs pop out. Looks good. I'm going to screw it back together. Go over here to my magnetic parts tray. Screw number one. All right, let's get that started. I'm going to hold that brush plate down so it doesn't go anywhere. But I do not want to have to put those springs back in. Honestly, that has been the hardest part of the whole process. It's putting those little springs back into their slots. They are small, hard to see, especially hard to see the little hole that they're supposed to go into. All right, so here we go. We have it back together and in just a moment, we're going to give it a smoke test and see how we did. All right, it's time for the smoke test here. I've got one wire hooked up to the contacts, to the center contacts, and I'm just going to ground it, the common to the wheel. Let's see what happens. One direction. We should reverse. Now it's trying to reverse. There we go. Come on. Well, I can smell that working. Okay, let's turn the reverser off. Got that. Let's turn the reverser back on. Okay, a little tight. Must be my springs causing a problem. Okay, that looks like forward, reverse, forward, reverse, forward. Okay, it'll work a whole lot better when we put it the rest of the way back together. But it does work. It does work. So we're going to reassemble everything and give it one final test. But so far, it hasn't been nearly as difficult as what the reputation of these motors is. Like I said, the hardest part was putting those springs back together. And it's very important, you know, if you've got a manual, if you've got a diagram, it makes it a whole lot easier. If I didn't have my Lionel diagram showing how the motors were put together, and that little trick about which brush spring holder goes on which side, it could have been a nightmare. So that made the process a whole lot easier knowing what it was supposed to look like. So let's put everything back together. And we'll start. I took the headlight out while I was working with this. I didn't want to bust a brand new headlight moving it around. So to put that in, it's a bayonet mount. Just line it up with the holes, push it in, and the metal contact acts as a spring and holds the headlight in there. Just make sure it lights up before we put everything back together. There we go. Okay, the problem is the power pack, not with the motor. Okay, so the light bulb works. Let's reassemble things in the opposite order that we took them apart. Okay, so we're at reassembly stage. And the first step is we're going to take and put the rear truck back on. That just slides into the little slot there. Then that little hook goes right there over the drawbar guide. Then I'm going to put my reversing unit in the up position, make it a little easier. Line everything up. There it goes. It's at the top. My boiler hole right here lines up with my motor hole. The shaft goes in with the slotted side on the, that would be the fireman's side of the engine, the left side as you're looking forward. And we screw it back together. Not too tight. Remember, you've got a plastic casing here. You just want to screw it to the point where there is some resistance. Doesn't have to be super tight. There we go. Okay. Now, I'm going to turn it back over this way. And we are going to put our front truck back on. These two screw holes go with the corresponding two holes there in the bottom of the boiler. And there's a little slot, you can see, right? Well, you might not be able to see. There's a little slot where this cutout goes. There's a little slot in the front of the motor. They slide together all in one piece. The other side. Or maybe I can see that on the other side. That's more likely. Come on. There we go. That's one. Put the drawbar screw on. Okay. These little magnetic parts organizers are great. For this, as you take the screws out, you put them in there, and you know they are not going anywhere. Okay. So, the boiler is firmly in there. And again, this one's wiggling a little bit because those plastic pieces that were broken off. I'm going to have to get in there and shim those up with some sort of gasket on either side. But that is a task for another day. Now, to put the side rods back on with our crosshead guide outside. Slides. If my arm will get out of the way of the camera view. There we go. That slides in there just like that. Push it in until you are lined up. All right. There we go. Okay. So, I'm going to take my quarter inch socket and screw it home. Don't really need a socket wrench or anything. Just make sure it's nice and snug. And repeat on the other side for the crosshead guide. All right. Like that. So, it goes in and out. Good. Line that up with the screw hole. Get the proper size screw. Get it started. Drive it home. Drop your socket. There we go. Drive it home. And we are reassembled. All right. We're going to put it up on the test stand and see how much, if any, better it is. All right. We're back together. We're wired up. We're on my poor man's test bed, test stand. And let's see what we've got. Hey, that's pretty good. Not bad. It's still noisy. But as we showed with our earlier experiment, noise comes with the territory. But that little bit of cleaning that we did to the brushes and to the commutator face, we've got much better slow speed control. Really cranks up on the fast. Now, let's try our reversing mechanism. Reverse. Forward. Oh, jammed up there. I'm going to do that once in a while. The nature of the beast with these, unfortunately. Reverse. Forward. Okay. So, all things considered, is it more work than a typical Lionel motor? Yes. But is it impossible, even for someone with, you know, I would say I have, maybe not basic, but slightly better than basic skills? No. The hardest part of the whole process was getting those brush contact springs in their proper positions. And again, do yourself a favor, if you're going to work with post-war trains, you know, get yourself a guide, like the K-Line guide, or there's one by Greenberg's. I don't think either one is currently in publication, but they can be found on Amazon and eBay, or, you know, join one of the online modelers groups for post-war Lionel. And, you know, ask around, you know, when you have a project to do, there's lots of people who are out there willing to help. I even work on those myself from time to time, not only to answer questions, but, you know, sometimes I get stumped too. If you're doing MPC and later Lionel, you can actually get those diagrams on Lionel.com, their website, for free. They are free downloads if you go to the service section of the website and you know what you're looking for. You can find exploded diagrams, parts numbers, and everything else on LionelTrains1970 and newer on Lionel.com, so that's good to know. So, breaking it down, are they inexpensive? Yes. Do they need a little bit more care and feeding? Yes. Does the reversing mechanism not work the greatest? Yeah, most of the time when you run it, you're probably going to keep it locked in your forward position and not have to worry about that, but these aren't the only Lionel types to do that. Is it more difficult? A little bit. Is it impossible? No, unless you've got a serious problem with the reversing mechanism or you really need to break into the motor and check the commutator and armature and all of that stuff. In that case, you need to take the motor apart, and it's two halves. You need to take the wheels off in order to accomplish that, and there are lots more little parts that can go flying everywhere and are a pain to put back together. But for basic care, feeding, maintenance, cleaning, and lubing, I was shocked at how easy it was. I had heard that these were a nightmare. This was my first time doing it, and it was a whole lot easier than I expected. And the results, I'm pleasantly surprised. Okay, now it's working. Just a matter of getting everything in the right spot and getting the gears to line up exactly right. So, are they as reliable as the metal-motored versions? No, you're better off with a real electronic reversing unit. Those jam up from time to time, but they're easy. Generally, they just need a little cleaning with some contact cleaner, and those start to work fine. It's mechanical, so you get a little problem in there. It's a little more work. But not impossible. Not impossible. I'm pleasantly surprised. So, from my experience, my first experience taking apart one of these plastic Scout motors, I would say thumbs up. And I would say for the $20 I invested in this and all of its cars, I'm very pleased. And, you know, it's not going to be an engine that I'm going to do prototypical switching with, but when I'm in the mode of, I just want to see trains run around and around and around and around and make a lot of noise and a lot of movement, this will be one of the engines that will get some runtime on my layout. So, there we go. And you don't necessarily have to avoid the plastic motored Scouts. Get them clean. And if you buy them cheap enough that it's, you know, worth the roll of the dice on whether you got a good one or a bad one, you know, go for it. And so, there you go. So, this is Mike signing off with this episode of Toy Train Tips and Tricks. Happy railroading.