I have yet another problem with a engine, this time my BLI M1-A. Seems I have lost power pick up from the engine? Stills runs but will stall at turnouts. This is the second time I have lost engine power pick up. Last time the power cord from the tender to the engine it self melted, I do run this one hard. It has all so cracked to center gears as well. BLI to there credit sent me a power cord for free and off she went again dragging a long train.
This time around the power cord looks new, well it is only 2 months old. I opened the tender and pull the power cord out and switched the ends, tender end went to the engine and engine end to the tender. Still no power or I would not be posting this question. Next I opened the engine it self, here is a picture of the board where the power cord hooks up.
Two center black wires go to the head light, gray and brown to the motor and the red one goes under the motor and hooks to the frame. There is a red gasket under the motor that covers the red wire.
Now the reason I am confused. If the red wire is a positive or the negative where is the other wire? It is not the draw bar and this is how I know. BLI fans and experts will remember the run of BLI of M1-A’s when you hooked the draw bar to the tender it would cause a dead short. This is one of them. To fix the problem I used a plastic screw from a Kadee coupler kit to replaces the metal mounting pin on the tender, some electrical tape and problem fixed. Guess that was well over a year ago and well over 200 hours. It was my second Steam Engine by BLI and it saw a lot of duty.
Could the brass blocks that hold the wheels in places be so foul they lost electrical contact?
I have been anxiously waiting for a particular road number in a BLI M1b. If it is like the M1a’s, with shorts, cracked gears and faulty wire plugs, maybe I don’t want one now!
Wish I could help you, but all I can say is that I think that one of the problems with BLI is the locomotive plug. I’ve got two–a N&W 2-6-6-4 and a M1-a that have given me nothing but fits because of the plug from the tender going into the locomotive. There’s just no GIVE to them, IMO. Several other locos I have with tender plugs seem to give no problems, but that huge master-plug from the tender into the loco on the BLI’s just doesn’t seem to have enough ‘give’ to it to cause a really good, tight connection. If BLI is going to insist on the loco plug, at least they could do is split it up so that the wires from the tender could run along either side of the tender drawbar, instead of being bunched up over it.
I’m continually working on those BLI plugs, and it takes a lot of the pleasure out of running an otherwise pretty good loco. I just don’t run my BLI’s very much, anymore.
Look at the screw on the left side of the board. It looks like it would ground the board to the frame. Another thing that has happened to me in the past was on an Atlas alco run hard and covered the axles that go thru the bronze bushings carboned up. Intermitant loss of current.
Twhite, what does IMO stand for? If you would not mind PM me your number and a time frame we can talk on my dime. I am having problems with my N&W Y6-b (runs great but sound is well, not just right) and front engine walk way arch’s off the grab rails on left hand turns and lost power to the front engine drive wheels.
Then there is the Big Boy by PCM? Again no power pick up from the engine!
Little back ground, both the Y6-B and Big Boy spent 2 and a half months at BLI a long with a Heavy Mike BLI and Blue Line GE AC 6000.
Big Boy repair report stated the the worm gears came out of alignment and bad power cord caused the front lights not to work. They never did fix the smoke unit but I did not care.
Y6-b, lost sound. There was no repair report, but was told over the phone the decoder was lose and that was it.
OK, lets stick with the M1-A. Other PCM engines will be a different rant! Any other ideas on the lack of power pick up from the engine?
One last rant on this postings, I have 54 engines total. 8 of them are Protos and none had to be sent back, 9 are junk Bachman or Life Like with Pancake motors (all still run) 29 Athearn and all run and then the 8 BLI / PCM/ Blue line. Only one I have not opened is my Hudson? When they run right they are great. But waiting 2 and a half months to get back 2 engines that cost $800.00 and have problems with in 20 hours of run time. That does not seem right.
Any meter with ‘ohms’ or ‘continuity’ will let you know which wheels pick up power. They sell for as little as $10-$12, - Wheels with ‘tires’ you can forget
MY GUESS is the red wire goes to the engineers side and the brown to the fireman’s. NORMAL is the ‘hot’ side going to the board (lights, sound, or DCC), and the ‘ground’ to the chassis - or fireman’s side wheels.
If things ‘work for a while’ I suspect the DCC board going bad. Most have a 1 amp limit. You could be exeeding this. I am presuming it’s with DCC locomotives. Your 9500’s wil tell you amps running DC,but Analog meteters are inaccurate on DCC.Ohms, YES.
SOUNDS are different ball game, You can always upgrade to a different sound module.
Galaxy, as far as I know the shorting problem has been worked out on the current line. First gear cracked because there was no lube! It saw a lot of heaving hauling, most of the time draging 30 plus cars up grade. It is a great puller, reason it cracked the second center gear. I have limted it to 20 to 25 cars now and I don’t think I will crack any more.
It was my second BLI Steam engine and it seen a lot of layout time, I would have to guess 400 hours plus. Last year I ran the layout around 40 hours a week. This year down to about 20 or so.
Actually, I don’t think I can be of much help–for one thing I’m strictly DC and most of my locos are brass w/o sound and all the bells and whistles. One of the reasons I don’t run my BLI’s very much is that on DC they take so MUCH voltage to just get started, and by that time, my brass are running around the layout as if they’re in the Kentucky Derby. So I’ve p
First off, invest in a basic multimeter so that you can check voltage, resistance and continuity. All so, having one will make doing electrical troubleshooting much easier.
A few things jump out from the picture you posted. The brown wire’s connection to the circuit board looks like a cold joint, at a minimum it is a poor solder job and could be shorting against the connection next to it. All so, the board does look burnt. It could all so be that in trying to resolder the wires to the board you applied too much heat and damaged or broke the trace so that the is no ‘real’ connection. A multimeter and a continuity check would tell.
Your first step should be to check continuity at each point all the pat hfrom wheels to motor
Maybe BLI has caller ID and they recognize your number??[swg] Last advice - in the future avoid the temptation to open a locomotive and tinker with it. I can’t think of a locomotive I have that I needed to tinker with straight out of the box to be able to get it to run. All so, remember these are not dragsters or tractor pullers![swg]
" First off, invest in a basic multimeter so that you can check voltage, resistance and continuity. All so, having one will make doing electrical troubleshooting much easier."
JK good idea and on my to buy list.
“A few things jump out from the picture you posted. The brown wire’s connection to the circuit board looks like a cold joint, at a minimum it is a poor solder job and could be shorting against the connection next to it. All so, the board does look burnt. It could all so be that in trying to resolder the wires to the board you applied too much heat and damaged or broke the trace so that the is no ‘real’ connection. A multimeter and a continuity check would tell.”
JK, I have never touched that part of the engine! It is stock as a rock!
“Your first step should be to check continuity at each point all the pat hfrom wheels to motor”
Not sure what you where trying to say in this part? By the way, did you use to make fun of my spelling? [;)]
“Maybe BLI has caller ID and they recognize your number?? Last advice - in the future avoid the temptation to open a locomotive and tinker with it. I can’t think of a locomotive I have that I needed to tinker with straight out of the box to be able to get it to run. All so, remember these are not dragsters or tractor pullers!”
On caller ID, could be, but they don’t pick up from my LHS either. As far as opening the engine, on the first problem with the dead short I called BLI first and Matt (no longer with BLI) said that was fine and would not voi
