10-10-2012, 12:36 AM
Reinhard;
I've been trying out your suggestion some and it seems to be the rear truck under the cab, which of course doesn't have much weight on a model like this. Also noticed that when only touching one wheel set of the rear truck to the track that it seems to get no power, whereas doing the same with the front truck it does get power.
Can't see the power pickup's very well so not sure if I should disassemble the trucks. Guess I'm too scared that I'll damage it rather than fix it. I was going spray some contact cleaner on the wheels and the contacts, but my can of it is empty (isn't that always the way).
I've also seen mention of soldering the connections to the decoder rather than relying on those plastic clips to make contact, but that would be a last resort for me.
This is really bugging me, as I operated the layout last Friday with this loco and it never once stalled, even moving though insulated frog switches at less than 1 scale mile per hour. Then this evening I decided I needed another break from my current project and started an operating session and it wouldn't run two feet without either hearing the sound stop/start or stalling completely! Loco just sat in the same spot between operating sessions and haven't done anything else that would seem to cause this. Loco is acting just like the Athearn GP15-1 that I got and never could get to run reliably!
Guess I'll keep playing with it and see what I can come up with.
I've been trying out your suggestion some and it seems to be the rear truck under the cab, which of course doesn't have much weight on a model like this. Also noticed that when only touching one wheel set of the rear truck to the track that it seems to get no power, whereas doing the same with the front truck it does get power.
Can't see the power pickup's very well so not sure if I should disassemble the trucks. Guess I'm too scared that I'll damage it rather than fix it. I was going spray some contact cleaner on the wheels and the contacts, but my can of it is empty (isn't that always the way).
I've also seen mention of soldering the connections to the decoder rather than relying on those plastic clips to make contact, but that would be a last resort for me.
This is really bugging me, as I operated the layout last Friday with this loco and it never once stalled, even moving though insulated frog switches at less than 1 scale mile per hour. Then this evening I decided I needed another break from my current project and started an operating session and it wouldn't run two feet without either hearing the sound stop/start or stalling completely! Loco just sat in the same spot between operating sessions and haven't done anything else that would seem to cause this. Loco is acting just like the Athearn GP15-1 that I got and never could get to run reliably!
Guess I'll keep playing with it and see what I can come up with.
Ed
"Friends don't let friends build Timesavers"
"Friends don't let friends build Timesavers"