You ever have one of those days? Always test your locos after you receive them!

[rrebell]

I always test everything after I buy it, had a few items that were just bad from the get go.

[selector]

I probably ought to have opened up more locos by now, but I just enjoy them if they work, and send 'em back if they don't....meaning I do test them within a couple of weeks of receipt. I'm not handy, and unfortunately not much of the other either...don't know what she saw in me. 

[PRR8259]

I always open and inspect each new loco on arrival, and then once it passes visual inspection, I test run it, the same day.

John

[richhotrain]

Nice going, Don. . . fixing it, that is. 

Rich

[DigitalGriffin]

So my RR C&O Allegheny H8 was having running problems at the club.  The headlight was burnt out and it was constantly stalling, even after wheel cleaning.

First thing I did was check the pickups in the tender.   The wipers were bent back and not touching the wheel axels.  Okay simple fix.

Next I went to replace the LED headlight.  Major pain as I had to remove the front truck.  And then removing the LED itself was diffcult.   Ordered some prewired LED SMDs off amazon.

4 burnt out as soon as I hit the headlight.   I started measuring voltages.  I couldn't figure out what the heck was wrong.   Finally put in a 40 Ohm resistor and that solved the problem.  It was a little hot at 3.5Volts which is...an odd voltage.

But I still had pickup problems.  I traced the wires from engine to tender.  It wasn't picking up the right rail.  I then traced them back to the tower.  Worked fine.   I scratched my head and started going down the female connector pins and testing continuity.

The factory reversed the contacts between Pin 1 and 4!  That's why the bulbs were burning out.  They were connecting to the track directly!  And I wasn't getting good pickup because it was going to + supply on the function lead common.

So those micro blade pins are a major pain in the duck-gas.  But I managed to pull one out, and then broke the second *sighs*  Somehow through the grace and luck, I managed to wire the pin back into the blade.

All in all 5 hours work!

Lesson of the day:
Test EVERYTHING on your locomotive when you get it from the factory.  I let mine sit for 6 years with a "I'll get back to it later" attitude, so well out of warranty.