I have two tunnel motors. One has worked fine the other is giving me fits. It runs fine on DC, no problems. With a decoder plugged in it just sits there with the front headlamp on. No control including turning the lights on or off. I tried a different decoder and same thing. I checked all of the wiring to the trucks and the frame for poor connections and all appears ok. Even put the decoders into different loco’s and they work fine.
Suspect there is some sort of short somewhere but I have not been able to correct it. I seem to recall that the headlamp being on indicates a short. Correct? The other possibility I can think of is that the light board may be defective. Anyone had similar problems with the DCC ready RTR Athearns?
Any ideas on how to track down the problem or test the light board?
Just curious. What DCC system are you using? All of the MRC DCC systems seem to randomly decide what to run and what not to run. I have had no problems on a decent system with my RTR athearns, but the MRC PA at the club has givin me trouble with ALL of my engines. any maker. We even got it replaced because we thought it might be a bad unit. But it is just a bad system, bad engineering, bad hardware, bad speed control, bad, bad, bad. Anyway, Ill stop ranting now. Probably havent helped you much, sorry.
I had problems with one because the electrical pickup wipers on the rear truck had such a thick coating of enamel on them that it was electrically dead. For some reason, the motor would run on DC, but not on DCC, until I disassembled the truck and scraped the enamel off of the wipers.
This is the third Athearn product I have had problems with out of the last five I have bought. Two out of four Genesis SD70s have problems with warped trucks that cause them to continually derail, and now the SD45T-2 electrical wipers.
I’m beginning to have serious doubts about ever purchasing any more Athearn locomotives. Their quality control is really bad, and they don’t have parts for any of their Chinese made locomotives.
Cacole - You made a very important point here. It would be great to hear from other Athearn owerns if they have encountered the same problems. I have heard about the Genesis truck problem before.
Did not disassemble that far down. I will look at the wipers next. Thank you for the information. I would pick a Kato over any Athearn any day. All in all I have been pleased with Athearn though.
Scraping the coating off the edges of the pickups worked.
Also found a ton of lub splashed all over the truck assemply. This probably didn’t help the situation.
From your description , it sound’s like you have a DCC Decoder engine on a DC track (read it). Athearn ‘tunnel motor’s’ don’t come with decoders, so you have NO warrantee’s on either the engine or the DCC board.
BEST to send it to a shop specializing in DCC intallation’s - such as Tony’s and you can try to duplicate their effort’s.
Sorrry I am confused…First you stated it ran fine on DC…You installed a decoder now it gives you fits…Sounds like a decoder installion problem…Or get your Athearn bash story right…
For clarification, When I purchase an engine I first run it on a short section of DC track to make sure it works fine. Then after plugging in the decoder I put it on my DCC layout. When it started acting up on DCC I removed the decoder and retested it on the DC section. Still ran fine on DC. Being that this engine is DCC 9 pin plug equipped there is not much to an install other than plugging it in.
The other tunnel motor I got at the same time has worked flawless from day one.
I purchased an Athearn R-T-R SD45-T2 to run on DC. The unit would make a vibrating sound as if there were some kind of electrical resistance. This sound would increase as voltage was added. It would hold the locomotive back from converting to motion until a higher than normal voltage was applied at which point the unit would then jump to speed. In motion, the vibrating noise became worse. When I put my fingers on the shell sides the vibration was much stronger than anything I had ever enountered in many years of rebuilding locomotives. I returned the unit to the LHS where I purchased it and was given another one (identical) in exchange. This one did the same thing only worse. I grew up in the Blue Box era when working on units was easy and so I chose to completely diassemble the unit and get to the bottom of it. I quickly narrowed the problem down to the motor itself. With gater clips attached to the motor assembly (which I had removed with the flywheels still on the shaft) the vibration was such that it moved its way across the work bench and I had to stop it from going over the edge. Knowing the motor was the problem (the armature was not bent as far as I could tell) I set out to remove the flywheels (or at least one of them) with the thought of checking out the armature and magnet placement attitudes. This was a fleating thought brought to an abrupt end when I realized the flywheels are fairly secured to the armature axle. Not having the correct tools to overcome this I set out to find an “in stock” replacement for the entire assembly. Unfortunately, no other Athearn motor I had would work as they all had the older style flywheel set-ups. Some Blue Box motors were identical to the R-T-R motor but the new R-T-R flywheels and shaft assembly would have been difficult to swap out and fit on to a Blue Box armature shaft. Chances are good that even if I had been able to access the R-T-R motor I would have discovered that the flaw was non-correctible anyway. Strangely enough I was able to continue runnin
For the Athearn RTR GP60Ms and GP60Bs, there was a bulletin that addressed an issue similar to this. The bottom motor clip contacted the frame. On DC, this wouldn’t be an issue, but if you installed a DCC decoder, the locomotive would not operate. To fix the issue, Athearn instructed owners to bend the clip so it wouldn’t contact the frame. Your locomotive might have the same problem. Here is the link to the bulletin which has pictures: http://www.athearn.com/ProdInfo/Files/Athearn-GP60M-DCC-Bulletin.pdf
I purchased an Athearn R-T-R SD45-T2 to run on DC. The unit would make a vibrating sound as if there were some kind of electrical resistance. This sound would increase as voltage was added. It would hold the locomotive back from converting to motion until a higher than normal voltage was applied at which point the unit would then jump to speed. In motion, the vibrating noise became worse. When I put my fingers on the shell sides the vibration was much stronger than anything I had ever enountered in many years of rebuilding locomotives. I returned the unit to the LHS where I purchased it and was given another one (identical) in exchange. This one did the same thing only worse. I grew up in the Blue Box era when working on units was easy and so I chose to completely diassemble the unit and get to the bottom of it. I quickly narrowed the problem down to the motor itself. With gater clips attached to the motor assembly (which I had removed with the flywheels still on the shaft) the vibration was such that it moved its way across the work bench and I had to stop it from going over the edge. Knowing the motor was the problem (the armature was not bent as far as I could tell) I set out to remove the flywheels (or at least one of them) with the thought of checking out the armature and magnet placement attitudes. This was a fleating thought brought to an abrupt end when I realized the flywheels are fairly secured to the armature axle. Not having the correct tools to overcome this I set out to find an “in stock” replacement for the entire assembly. Unfortunately, no other Athearn motor I had would work as they all had the older style flywheel set-ups. Some Blue Box motors were identical to the R-T-R motor but the new R-T-R flywheels and shaft assembly would have been difficult to swap out and fit on to a Blue Box armature shaft. Chances are good that even if I had been able to access the R-T-R motor I would have discovered that the flaw was non-correctible anyway. Stran