Decoder Question

481 views

1 replies

Anonymous

Member since
April 2003
305,205 posts

Decoder Question

Posted by Anonymous on Tuesday, December 7, 2004 9:23 PM

Hopefully someone in this forum can give me some clues to a decoder issue before I buy a replacement decoder or motor.

Here is the problem. I have a HO Rivarossi Challenger with an NCE D13SR decoder. Up until today it ran flawlessly. When I went to run it today, smoke came out of the tender (where the decoder is installed) and the Circuit Breaker on my Command 2000 tripped.

Upon inspection, I saw one of the small IC's had a burn mark on it. Since I have another NCE D13SR decoder that would not program, my wife, being the expert surface mount solderer that she is, swapped out the bad IC with one off the other decoder.

The engine ran fine for a couple minutes, then stopped dead. Since it was on the other side of my layout, I hit the reverse and the engine backed up perfectly. It won't go forward now, or if it does, it goes about 6 inches and stops. It backs up without a problem, for as long as I care to leave it run.

I have inspected the drivetrain for binding, there is none. The motor shaft turns freely in either direction. I have cleaned the wheels and contacts and inspected the lubrication. No problems found.

Anyone have any ideas?

By the way, all the other locos run jus fine. (I also posted this message on the Layout forum)

Ray