2056 Stuck in neutral help!!

[Anonymous]

My 2056 Korean war version is stuck! The light glows bright, smoke pours out grt, just no forward/reverse. I checked eunit and took apart/cleaned. Pawl moves fingers and pawl moves every time I hit direction button on kw. Solder looks fine. Springs clean. I did clean commutator and replaced brushes. What can I do next? Help?
Thanks
Tom

[ben10ben]

Are the e-unit fingers making good contact with the drum? If they're bent at all, you can end up with no power to the motor. I would suggest taking them back out and putting an upward bend on each one, or better yet, replacing both of them, and then trying again.

Beyond that, you could be dealing with a bad solder joint between the e-unit and motor, brushes not making contact with the commutator, or a bad armature.

The solder joint is the easiest to check, so I would suggest reflowing the solder on every joint between the e-unit fingers and motor.

If the brushes are the problem, it could be either corrosion inside of the well, or weak springs. In either case, I would try manually pushing each one down inside of the well with the power applied. If the motor turns at all when you do this, this is most likely the problem. Poli***he inside of each well with a piece of rolled up sandpaper, and try again. If this doesn't fix it permanantly, your springs need to be replaced. A new set will cost you less than a $1(probably less than $.50), and will be extremely easy to install.

A bad armature is the least desirable option. To test for this without any dissasembly, apply power and turn the wheels by hand. If you reach some point where the motor wants to turn on its own, let it go, and see how long it runs. If it stops after a couple of seconds, this is probably the case. If you get no life, it's still probably the case. To check for sure, you need to check for continuity across the commutator sections. If any combination has no continuity, or if one is significantly different from the other two, you have a bad segment. You may be able to easily repair it yourself, but you'll probably either need to buy a new armature(about $30) or have it rewound(about $30).

[phillyreading]

Check the e-unit again or the brushes, make sure the brushes are flat and have no pits in them, have you cleaned the armature contact area with a pencil eraeser?
Lee