Al Penrose (BWA) sent me four brackets for the smaller Mabuchi motors.  These sell for $1.50 each and are worth it in aggravation alone. They came shipped in an envelope with a letter.  They are small!  The serious scratch builder that wishes to make his own brass chassis is the intended buyer.  One of the hard things to make is the engine mounting bracket because the bolt holes and the hole for the motor's armature shaft have to be carefully positioned.  Al has a die and a milling machine with which he cuts these out.

The bracket is easy to position if you have a deep junk box.  I find it hard to throw stuff away because things have other uses even if they are broken.  This project confirms my belief in being not only a scavenger but also a pack rat.  The piece of junk needed is a dead or useless motor the same size as the one you want to install. I want to install a Scalextric F1 motor in my scratch built chassis and so I found a motor from a dead CD drive that was the same size as the Scalextric motor.  The motor was OK but was too slow for slot racing.

When you have the hole in the bottom of the chassis cut and  ready to drop in an engine, you take your scrap motor bolt it to the BWA's bracket/plate without a gear on it. When it is aligned the way you want it then solder the plate to the chassis.  Don't worry about the motor getting hot as it is a piece of garbage anyway.  Motors don't like to get hot, but a useless motor is  . . . well, useless! Now the garbage has value.  When the solder is cooled take the garbage motor out and bolt the real one in. Voile! A perfectly aligned plate and motor.

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