I own a Walters mainline F40PH locomotive, the one that was released in 2015 with a soundtrax decoder. The locomotive only has about an hour or two of run time on it, the other day I decided to run it again and it runs very poorly now. It will either randomly stop or it will chug (start and stop on its own). At first I thought it was an electrical contact issue, so I cleaned the track and the wheels, but it made no difference. Then I reset that the decoder, and nothing. All my other locomotives work well. My layout has a Digitrax Zephyr. Does anyone have a any thoughts or suggestions. Thank you.
Reset was on the tip of my tongue until you said you did so.
Did you cycle the power after the reset? Any new, abnormal sounds that might indicate a broken gear?
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
Cycle the power? I am unfamiliar with this
You set CV = 8 (Usually) then you either turn off the command station or remove the loco from the track giving the capacitors time to drain. I don't actually know what that does, maybe Randy can enlighten me. Maybe it's one of those Internet myths. Then power things back on.
Had a very similar problem with an SD70ace recently. This unit is straight DC, however the symptoms are the same. What I did to fix it.........assuming the internal parts and pieces, electrical pickups are similar. I completely disassembled the drive train and truck assemblies. Found the trucks to be packed full and I mean full of grease. After cleaning this up, electrical contact is accomplished by very small metal contacts that ride on the brass bearing for the axles. When metered out from wheel to the PC board, most where either high resistance or completely open. Reforming the contacts to touch the bearing block solidly resulted in good electrical connection wheel to PC board. However one contact would not cooperate resulting in ten wheel vs twelve wheel pickup. This seemed to correct my problem. Use extreme care and patience if you take this apart as the parts are very flimsy and easily broken. Out of 300 locomotives.....8 are Walthers Mainline products and everyone of them has either required repair fresh from the box or soon after with very little run time. These where Christmas gifts and it was the thought that counted. Looking back........I was burned on that 130’ turntable and now problematic locomotives. Going forward.....will not purchase any of their products again.
Make sure you don't have it selected on two throttles (one of which *could* be a jump throttle on your Zephyr).
I already made sure of that, I selected a fake locomotive address into my UT4, then I unplugged it from my Loconet and lastly when I reset my decoder I kept the default address of 03.
Hmm, very interesting. I’ll give this a try tomorrow (fingers crossed).
EMDSD40 Had a very similar problem with an SD70ace recently. This unit is straight DC, however the symptoms are the same. What I did to fix it.........assuming the internal parts and pieces, electrical pickups are similar. I completely disassembled the drive train and truck assemblies. Found the trucks to be packed full and I mean full of grease. After cleaning this up, electrical contact is accomplished by very small metal contacts that ride on the brass bearing for the axles. When metered out from wheel to the PC board, most where either high resistance or completely open. Reforming the contacts to touch the bearing block solidly resulted in good electrical connection wheel to PC board. However one contact would not cooperate resulting in ten wheel vs twelve wheel pickup. This seemed to correct my problem. Use extreme care and patience if you take this apart as the parts are very flimsy and easily broken. Out of 300 locomotives.....8 are Walthers Mainline products and everyone of them has either required repair fresh from the box or soon after with very little run time. These where Christmas gifts and it was the thought that counted. Looking back........I was burned on that 130’ turntable and now problematic locomotives. Going forward.....will not purchase any of their products again.
I would try the reset and then power off (until the capacitors discharge) then Power on, before you go through all that work.
Gary
Like I said earlier I am not familiar with this, so I just want to doublecheck the process. Do I put the locomotive on my programming track as usual, reset the decoder and then turn off my Zephyr? Is this correct?
gdelmoro I would try the reset and then power off (until the capacitors discharge) then Power on, before you go through all that work.
I'm not sure how the Zephyr works for a reset, check the manual. I use a DP150, and it shuts down power immediately after the reset, and you have to turn track power back on.
I'm sure it's in the Zephyr manual.
Mike.
My You Tube
I reset the decoder and nothing, I reset the Zephyr and nothing. Then I cleaned the electrical contacts in the trucks and the square contacts on the axles and it seemed to do the trick. The locomotive does not run 100% now, but it is much, much better. Thank you for all your suggestions
And as you run this more, in each direction, it will "break in", and be just fine.