Services: More Speed

Can we make your monorail run faster? You bet!

Will you be happy with it? Now, there's a question...

More power - image of blurred monorail

Why, oh why is the #1 question "how can I make my monorail go faster?" ? Of all the questions I received over the past few years this must have accounted for 90% of them. I never considered the speed of the monorail to be an issue but "the voice of the customer" must be listened to. I have raced model cars for many years and more speed *always* causes more problems than anticipated!

More speed takes either a more powerful motor, more batteries, or both. Higher voltage batteries are readily available to make the monorail much faster. Lithium cells are now available in the AA form and will drop directly into the monorail's battery tray. Lithium cells have about 3.7 Volts compared to a standard AA cell with 1.5 Volts. With two lithium cells the monorail will run *very* fast. The LEDs and sound board are likely to burn out immediately, they should be rewired so they run from only one lithium cell (3.7 Volts). ***Lithium cells can get HOT (as in start a fire hot) when something goes wrong, do not use these if you are not certain of your abilities to wire them properly.***

The motor will take a bit longer to burn out but it too is likely to do so. No problem, replacements are readily and cheaply available. (Atomic Mods) Upgrade motors (for X-Mod or Mini-Z RC cars fit) are easy to find, power and price usually go hand in hand. ***These motors are listed as the same size as those in the monorail (Mabuchi 130) but I have not tried any of these and can not verify that they will fit.***

At some point the monorail will no longer stay on the beam. Superelevation is the process of banking the beam so the monorail can negotiate the curves at higher speed. Any bumps in the beam joints are likely to cause trouble too.

By now you are probably thinking this is too much work. I agree! ;)