Ok first off I bought a BB trainmaster. It was a dummy engine. After waiting a month for power trucks that I won on ebay I got into powering it. I thought all was good, I had an old athearn motor. So I went about soldering pickups to the bronze washers on the trucks. All going good sailing through this like a pro right. Well got everything soldered and checked the operation on the roller stand. So far so good. So I take it over to the test loop it is running great until......I get into the curve. It throws sparks all over from the truck mounts swivel point. On both sides. Sooooo I take it back to the bench and put in some kadee red fiber washers around the swivel point. That sort of worked. Less sparks. Take it back to the loop and it makes it around a few times then slows then stops. I take it off the tracks and run leads directly to the motor. Runs Slow and tripped the breaker in the throttle. So I figure Ha I found the problem a bad motor. NO problem I strip all the useful stuff off and go about preparing another motor. This time a Roundhouse motor I got out of a new rs-3. Make some new drive rods to power the trucks to accomidate for the shorter motor. Button it all back up and take it to the loop. First curve shorts it out. Back to the bench and do a little resoldering of the bronze bushing and lead wires(figured it was shorting to the frame somehow). Back to the track makes it around a couple time all is looking good, then the motor slows to about half the speed I have dialed in and then comes to a stop and trips the breaker in the thottle. Ok maybe it is the bachman spectrum trottle so lets hook up the dcc controler. Now it makes it around the track to one point just coming off a curve and stops. Then it shorts. Picking it up and putting one truck on the track and it shorts, put the other truck on and it shorts, unplug it and plug it back in and set the engine down no short.
So what the Fuzz? What is going on here I am really confused.
Help please
Thanks
Mike
alco's forever!!!!! Majoring in HO scale Minorig in O scale:)
First, did the power trucks you bought have all the electrical pickups already installed? The Athearn trucks have pickup on all wheels, so one side is grounded to the frame and the other side is connected to an arm that comes up beside the gear tower. At times, this arm will swivel far enough, especially on tight curves, to touch the frame and cause a short. In this case, the simplest fix is to insulate the arm in the area where it comes through the frame. I used a short piece of shrink sleeve on several engines that had this problem, but electrical tape should work.
since you soldered wires right to the bronze bushings (about the most direct power pickup you can do on an Athearn - a good idea), it could be one of you solder points is touching the frame when the truck swivels. Or when soldering some of the insualtion melted off one of the wires and that's what's touching the frame. I don;t think you have any sort of motor problem, not if it runs fine in a roller stand and on straight track.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Thanks for the help guys. Well after staying up until 1:20 this morning I finally got it to run without shorting. There was some flash near the swivel point. I filed that away and painted the whole area with thick paint. I also put some liquid electrical tape around the frame where the trucks and possible wires might contact. I also put the liquid tape on the wires just in case that was a problem as well. Seems to have worked. Now I have to reposition the motor so the weight does not rub the shell. This project will never end i tell ya
You would probably have been much better off in purchasing a powered chassis from Athearn parts if they have one.
cacole You would probably have been much better off in purchasing a powered chassis from Athearn parts if they have one.
Are you kidding? This is probably the best education he'll get for working on locomotives. Of course, I've always been a tinkerer and find it a great victory making something work properly that didn't work before.
Soldering wires to the bushings is not really a good idea: heating the bushings will cause them to expand and contract as they cool and cause them to seat tighter on the axels causing increase fricyion and the wire can keep them from floatingg freely in their ctadels. A better place to solder lead on the trucks is to the brass rivets, (better solder connection too). One can also solder the wire to the steel plate.
Jay
C-415 Build: https://imageshack.com/a/tShC/1
Other builds: https://imageshack.com/my/albums
Unless you're really ham-handed and use a 250 watt soldering iron on top of it, it would be very unlikely that you would deform the bushings and cause the center hole to be egged out in any way (you can't really shrink the whole bushing - without removing material. It may expand when heated but when it cools it will be the original size, not smaller). A quick blip of a soldering iron is not going to cause deformation.
Hopefully thin flexible wire was used, solid wire is less flexible and will simply break off eventually if it flexes too much.
Part of the problem with some of the RTR and Genesis models is that the plastic part of the truck doesn;t have a deep enough slot so the bushings never really make good contact with the steel sideframes - in fact my RS3 has this problem - I DID originally solder wires to the brass rivet and it didn't really help.