I recently bought a Kato SD80MAC "used". DC, not DCC. I set it on the track and it ran fine. When I turned on the throttle again, the lights lit up but the motor did not come on. Long story short, I removed the shell and nudged the rear flywheel, and the motor started and the unit ran fine. This happens intermittently in both directions. When I hold the unit in place and wiggle the flywheel back and forth with the throttle on, the motor starts, stops, starts, stops with the wiggling movement. It seems like there's a dead spot in the motor. Do I need to replace the motor?
Before you give up on the motor (which I've never had a problem with), make sure the connection between the axles, and the brass contact strip, inside the truck frames, is CLEAN, and lubed.
I use this.
And make sure the pick-up wire is in place, as they used a plastic clip to hold the wire to the truck, and to the board.
I've had a couple come loose. Easy fix.
Mike.
My You Tube
I had an Atlas/Kato RSD that had a spot of glue or something on the commutator. Those era Kato motors weren;t easy to take apart, perhaps the newer ones are a little differemt, but I was able to clean off the glue which fixed it. If it stopped witht he glue covered segment under a brush, it wouldn;t start. Nudge it in either direction, it would go and seem to run ok, it was hard to tell it was skipping a segment. But it inevitably stopped right on the segment with glue, and wouldn;t restart.
And it came that way - it had never even been out of the box before.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Heres a parts diagram, scroll down about 3/4's way, you'll see the axle contact strips, in the diagram of the truck, showing the axles.
Axles, contract strip, side frames.
A wire goes from each side of that truck assemble, to the main board. They DO come loose, and that contact strip needs to be clean.
Genesis are the same.
Randy, this describes my issue perfectly. The position of the armature when it stops seems to determine whether or not the motor will start again. The fact that the lights always come on tells me that power is getting to the board, so it has to be a motor issue. Thanks.
Kato's motors are fairly easy to disassemble. If you have a multi-meter, try taking the armature out and touch the positive and negative leads to each pair of commutator plates on the Ohm setting. That will tell you if you have a dead winding, and sometimes the end of the wire can be re-soldered if it's broken at the commutator.
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