2-8-2 Mikado

[Anonymous]

I was given and old Tyco kit by a friend. I have it painted and built. I am having an electrical problem. It picks up power from on one rail in the loco and then a feeder wire goes to the tender for ground. It runs great in reverse, starts out with little power applied(no problems). When going forward you can hear the tender shorting out and I have to put the throttle at about 40 to 50 to get it moving. I have an MRC Tech 4 220 and a Tech 2 2400. I now have the unit dissasembled and cleaned out the tender wheel slots and cleaned the ends of the needle points on the wheelsets. When I built the kit I used "Blacken It" to blacken the brass wheels. The chemical actually made the axles unable to pick up power although I know that it should still work even after the blackening. I tested this with a volt-meter and had no continuity. Any advice would be helpful. If you know a way to rewire the train, that would be good also. I'm not afraid of a soldering iron.

Thanks,
Terry M.

P.S. Did I make any sense?

[Anonymous]

I can't help you if you have an electrical problem,but clean driver/tender pick-up wheels are mandatory.
Take an old T-shirt section, lay it over the track, and pour cleaning solution on the T-shirt and roll
the tender over the wet t-shirt, back & forth.

Turn your loco over, wheels in the air,connect aligator wired
clips to the track and on the opposite end of the wire, strip back the insulation.
Touch the bear end wires to the power drivers, power up the throttle, and hopefully the wheels will spin.

If so, then also apply the wet t-shirt/cleaner with your index finger to the spinning loco wheels.

If this all works, you should have excellent rail contact. Here's a clean rail/wheel site, six pages of hints,
http://www.ttx-dcc.com/technews/clean_machine.htm

[Anonymous]

I'm repeating the link because there is an underscore _line between clean_machine.
http://www.ttx-dcc.com/technews/cleam_machine.htm

END.

[Anonymous]

It's clean, not cleam

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the fast reply.

Terry

[Anonymous]

Terry, I suspect that since the loco runs fine in reverse that the problem is not electrical. These locos used a single pitch worm on the motor shaft. The early kits had a brass worm but it was later changed to plastic or nylon. I suspect that the worm is meshed too tight against the worm gear on the axel.. Try loosing the screw that holds down the motor. See if that helps...if so shim up the motor just a bit to loosen the mesh of the worm and worm gear...Vic

[Anonymous]

Terry, I overlooked on thing. You say you can hear the tender shorting out. That sounds like a bad insulated wheel. Check all of the insulated wheels on the tender and the loco. The arc will occure at the weakest point in the circuit even though the bad wheel may be on the loco itself...Also look for reversed insulated wheels and be sure that the pilot and trailing wheels of the loco are not shorting against the loco's frame. Vic

[Anonymous]

I will give that a try. My kit is the one with the plastic worm gear. Do you know if the motors listed in the Walthers catalog in the Mantua section will work? I ask because the tender frame says Mantua and the Mikados in the catalog look a lot like the Tyco I have.

Terry

[Anonymous]

It looks like all of the wheels are in the correct place and the loco drivers' insulation seems to be ok. As I was saying about the Blacken It, it rusted the axels pretty good and could be the cause of the shorting. Do you know who makes wheelsets that have small diameter axels? Smaller than Jay Bee?

Terry

[Anonymous]

I have a Bachmann 0-6-0 in N scale that also uses a worm gear and it did the same thing. It ran great in reverse but wouldn't go forward. It turned out that the brass worm gear had too much slack against the plastic spur gear and it jammed going forward. I had to gently bend the frame on that loco to fix it. If I recall, I also had to shim it. It took a lot of trial and error but it worked. I ended up retiring it from my layout anyway since the undercarriage hit the switch machines on my track! lol Hope this helps

[BR60103]

Terry:
when you say the wheels are "shorting", do you mean that or are they just not picking up current? Does a lighted car on the track flicker, or another loco stop? then you have a short. If it's just an open circuit, you need to clean the axle ends and any place else that the current passes through. Also check how the tender passes the current to the loco; there may be a problem there when it pulls that closes up when you push.

The comment about the Tyco looking like Mantua: Tyco started out as the ready-to-run division of Mantua. I'm not sure what happened -- I think they split off at some point. The cars and locos certainly still looked the same, but the Tyco stuff had a reputation of being unfixable or not having spare parts. I've never had any myself.

David

[Anonymous]

Darn Terry!!!, I'm starting to think that the Blacken-It may have caused the problems too!!! Could have in some way chemically broken down the insulation on one or more of the insulated wheels.
As for substitute wheels...You'll probably be able to find a set of tender trucks for that loco at a trainshow...there's always a bunch of parts for those old kits around. Same for the motor too...the Tyco and Mantua kits used the same open frame motor. It still bothers me that the loco runs ok in reverse...wish I had my hands on it...I'll keep thinking on that. Keep me posted if you want to at [e-mail] Take Care and Have Fun!!...Vic

[Anonymous]

Terry, Sent you several more suggestions at the Yahoo address but I'm not sure that the message went as this homebuit computer "burpped" just as I hit the send button. Let me know if you didn't get it....Vic