I am asking this question for a friend. I have searched the community and don’t see anything applicable.
He has two Athearn Genesis SD60M diesels that seem to have the same issue. While operating on a straight section of track they will move a couple inches, stop, restart, stop, and so on. They will move either with a small finger touch, or on their own.
There is not a short circuit occuring. Both of these locos had their original MRC decoders removed and replaced with Tsunami’s. I cannot answer the “did they operate correctly with the original decoders” question.
The instructions show that the trucks are wired to the decoder.
The wheels, axles, and bearings have been cleaned.
Aside from checking if there is a loose connection where the motor wires attach to the decoder (to be done next), can anyone with experience with these locos suggest something that was overlooked?
The first thing to check is whether the wires attached to the trucks and Tsunami board are all soldered connections or have small black plastic clips holding the wires in place. If they still have the plastic clips, remove all of them and solder every connection.
Command station need to be reset/purged? Loco’s address dialed up on another controller? Decoder needs reset, to many CV changes conflicting with one another? Track need cleaned? Tsunamis are very sensitive to dirty track and/or wheels.
I agree with PennCentral. Try clearing your locos from all of your throttles first and if that doesn’t help do a reset of the command station. If the problem still remains do a reset of the locos decoders. Finally if all else fails dig into the locos wiring and see if there are any problems.
I don’t believe that this is a common thing with NCE systems. However, loco is now at another railroad for testing. If it does the same thing there it is not a command station issue.
When I saw problem demonstrated, only one handset was plugged in.
I believe that owner is a use out of the box kind of guy. But I did pass this question along.
As I mentioned, track, wheels, axles, and bearings were all cleaned.
Also note that he has another loco (same model) that does the same thing, so whetever the issue is, it appears to be common between the two.
I don’t own an Athearn Genesis SD60M, but I have several Genesis diesels with Tsunami decoders. That start,stop,start,stop stuff has occasionally occurred with my Tsunami-equipped Genesis models, and the only solution is a complete decoder reset to factory defaults on the programming track.
All six were factory installed. One actually failed not long after I bought the loco, and Soundtraxx (not Athearn) replaced it. So, that one, I installed myself. Since there is a special version of the Tsunami decoder for Genesis diesels, I wonder if this has any effect on decoder performance.
I seriously doubt that it is the Genesis diesel at fault. I have several Athearn Genesis diesels in which I installed non-sound NCE decoders, and I have no problems.
The TSU-GN1000 is the customized Tsunami decoder that Soundtraxx manufactures to specifically fit in Athearn Genesis diesel locomotive. I cannot verify this, but my guess is that there is some defect in that decoder.
I have had a couple of instances where I could not decide between the decoder and the loco as the source of a performance problem.
For me, the beginning of the solution was to remove the decoder and run the loco on a DC track to observe performance without the decoder. In both instances, it was the decoder, not the loco.
This is a follow up in case anyone is interested. The individual who is working on the loco reported that the issues seem to be mechanical and not decoder related.
The wires that go from the trucks to the motor are inserted in a small hole in the metal portion of the truck frame and then soldered. On one truck the wire connection was hanging on with just a couple strands and broke of when he touched the wire. On the other truck there was a blob of solder that prevented the wire from coming out of the hole, but did not actually attach the wire properly to the truck. All of the wires were removed and replaced.
(If a wire breaks, that’s a mechanical problem, right?)
The metal parts of the truck were painted black as the model was supplied. Although the model’s owner had cleaned up the small squares that act as bearings, he had not completely cleaned up the slots in the metal frame where the bearings ride. The slots were cleaned.
The trucks are held together by rivets. These rivets also are the attachment points for the plastic side frames. The repairman was of the opinion that the metal plates were possibly painted prior to being riveted. Since the rivets are also the electrical path between the inner and outer metal frame pieces, it was thought that this might be affecting electrical continuity. The repairman found a way to tighten the rivets a bit.
So far the loco seems to now be behaving properly on the test track. Next test will be on the layout.