After spending 3 hours one afternoon speed matching two Athearn AC4400's which I thought was great , I had set the Start voltage, mid voltage and top voltage for each and they ran very close to the same. The next morning I went back to to fine tune the two locos with CV66 and 95 for forward and reverse trim, but before any more settings I ran the loco's and they ran into each other within 3 feet as if I hadn't spend any time matching there speeds.
The only think I can think of is that during the original setup the decoder and motor had warmed up and were set up warm (over 3 hours) and when I went back the next morning both were cold.
Has anyone experienced this problem or this the Athearn Advantage again!
I've had the same problem. Not sure if it was lube related.
You might think about using your PC and DecoderPro from JMRI. It used to take me hours to match locos with my Zephyr. With DecoderPro and the throttles in PanelPro it takes just minutes. I don't know what DCC system you are using but they have a program compatible with most popular systems.
Check them out, the programs are free and work like a dream.
Here's a link: http://jmri.sourceforge.net/
Remember its your railroad
Allan
Track to the BRVRR Website: http://www.brvrr.com/
It sounds like your settings were fine. Yes it's possible one of your engines runs better after it's been warmed up a while, so after spending 3 hours speed matching it was running better than it did from a cold start the next day. Maybe the other one wasn't as affected.
I guess I'd monkey with it to get it somewhere in the middle, so they run reasonably well together cold and reasonably well together when warmed up (assuming you'd run the engines for several hours during an operating session?) It's nice to have the engines speed-matched exactly, but they don't have to be perfect in order to work together OK.
Warming up a loco by running it a good long time is a given for speed matching. And it is recommended that a new loco be run for at least an hour before attempting it.
I agree. I have now speed matched over 80 of mine in pairs and triplets and a few quads (could only use JMRI Decoder Pro for this) and yes, you will get different results always when the locos are cold.....(although I know there are those who have written in this forum that identical new locos run identically, I have not experienced it.)
By the way, that also means your speed matched pairs, triplets or larger consists all need to be warmed up individually on each subsequent occasion. Speed matching does not mean you can turn on the controller and drive off a consist of locos. You will NOT have them matched perfectly if you just start running them together from a cold start, regardless of brand.
I heard of one club that doesn't permit matched locos because they don't want poorly matched sets being dragged around.
Now, here is another thing you may not have realized/experienced too.....you cannot match them in both forward and reverse. Almost every loco runs differently in reverse and the CV settings for one direction are not useful in reverse. Of my many pairs, less than 20% are close enough in both forward and reverse...so I limit the reversing when using a consist. I do all the train makup with switchers and then drive it off forward with the consisted group.