Ok, I got a NOS 6-12944 Sunoco Oil Derrick today and when I bench tested it on the workbench it worked fine. It is from 1997 made in USA. My test bench has a Lionel 1063 75-watt transformer from 1961. So I decided all was good and placed it on my layout.
I use a CW-80 set to 13 watts for accessories and have several accessories on it but most are just LED lights. Feeding with 20-gauge wire.
When I hooked the Derrick up to the CW-80 it would stall and jump and not pump??? I turned off all of the other accessories and it did the same, I turned it up to 15 volts and it did the same??? So I thought I needed to use bigger wire to feed it. Went to a temp jumper of 18 gauge and still the same. Ran a jumper off the ZW track connection with 20 gauge and set to 13 volts and it works great??? So I wired it up on it’s own switch with power from one of the accessory ports of the ZW and it is working fine.
What would cause this difference between the ZW and CW?? [:^)]
Tks,
I might be way off coarse here but could it be that when hooked up to the zw the polarity is one way and the cw-80 its the other way and this unit is very picky
RT I thought of that and tried the wires both ways whit no better results. I think Jim probe may be on to something if I knew what he was talking about. [D)] [swg]
Didn’t mean for my inner EE to come out.[;)] Basically, the output of the CW80 isn’t as clean as a ZW’s. I got tired of the CW80’s issues and quirks, and have “corrected” mine.[(-D]
I replaced the CW80 with a 1033. Between the compatability issues and the way that the CW80 automatically reduces power when slightly overloaded, I couldn’t take the hassle any longer
“I use a CW-80 set to 13 watts for accessories and have several accessories on it but most are just LED lights. Feeding with 20-gauge wire.”
I can see using 20GA with LED’s. However, you might just want to try connecting your CrXp Wave 80 directly to the derrick with oh, some 16 GA and see what happens.
What type of ZW are you using, postwar or modern? I think the output of both the CW-80 and modern ZW both are a chopped sine wave.
One difference in the output is the ZW directly follows throttle position whereas the CW-80 track output ramps up to throttle position over time. I don’t know if the accessory output of the CW-80 ramps up, but I doubt it because the accessory output is fixed (programmable).
I would not recommend getting rid of your CW-80. It gets a lot of bad press, but I find it a very reliable nice transformer with lots of nice features. It isn’t a very powerful transformer, as you noted with the overload fold-back feature, but if you use it within it’s capabilities and don’t overload it, it is a very nice transformer.