I just purchased a new Challenger. Price was real right so I bought it. I had reservatations, do to my bad luck with Athern deisel engines with sound not living up to advertizing, but like I said price was very good so i pulled the trigger. when i put on my home layout, engine was jerky, would stop and restart, etc etc...just not good. I have a NCE DCC system where all my engines run just fine. I did do small test track run @ LHS but small track does not give good example..anyway here's my questions..WE believe the MRC decoder may be the problem, and if so, how hard a job is it to replace the decoder in this unit? Also which decoder to purchase? Anyone who has done this project? Last option will be to bring it back tp LHS, but I would not mind the work if replacing decoder has proven to be wothwhile..thanks in advance...Tom
Tom, I had 2 Athearn Big Boys that decoder kept resetting them self. My fix was a refund and bought a PCM Big Boy.
I will add there where more problems than the decoders, like tenders that would not roll on a 12% grade. Now that I know a little more about DCC and adding decoders and if there was no mechanical problems I would have fixed them.
Cuda Ken
I hate Rust
Need to tear apart the tender. Davidmbedard who ad already answered your email is an excellent source of info - he helped me tremendously - I purchase an Athearn FEF with no sound and installed a Havey Tsunami. For me the most challenging part was opening up the tender without breaking parts (i ended up gouging a few parts).
I haven't gotten the chuff quite right but the engine runs great. Good luck...
Been there, done that.
Do a search under Model Railroader Forums for:
Tsunami Heavy Steam sound decoder for Genesis Challenger
Poke around under that topic and you should run into a complete set of instructions for this task.
David! looks like your the expert on this subject!..Is the project worth it? looked under "search" and did not find direct issue. Tom
Try this:
http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/p/64941/798400.aspx#798400