I have three Kato AC4000 engines that I installed the Digitrax DCC/Sound/Speker combo units. Two out of three work great. The third will run for 10 or 15 feet and then stop. The sound seems to work fine most of the time, but even the sound does strange things. It seems that ater the engine runs 10 feet the motor is not getting any power.
I returned the decoder and installed a replacment and the engine does the same thing so this leads me to believe that it is something with the engine. I installed the original power board and the engine works fine, install the decoder back in and it just stalls after 10 feet or so. The only way to get it started is to take it off the track and put it back on. Like I said, I tried two decoders so I do not think that it is either of the decoders, chances of getting two bad decoders with the same strange problem are pretty low.
Could be a short in the wiring somewhere, or even a bad motor. Put the DC board back in and run it through an ammeter and check the curretn draw. bet it’s overloading and the decoder is shutting down - it would work fine on DC like this as long as your power pack has enough power to run it.
Make sure when the decoder is in, nothign it touching - the motor contact strips, for one thing. Make sue they CAN’T touch - sometimes things will be ok witht he shell off but with the shell pressing everything into place things can touch.
Well after three months, three decoders and trying a different motor I took the engine in to a pro to see if he could fix it and I would pay whatever he wanted to charge. The first thing that he did was look at the wheels and said that they were to dirty. He cleaned the wheels and said to try that and if it did not work then bring it back. I took the engine home, cleaned the wheels some more and tried it and I will be darned if that did not fix the problem. The same solution that was suggested in this forum three months ago, I just did not possibly see how it could be dirty wheels. The wheels did not look dirty to me.
I just thought that I would let everyone know what I have learned in the four months since I got into DCC. If it does not work there seems to be two things that will correct 98%+ of all problems:
1- If it does not work clean the wheels and track first.
2- If it still does not work restore the factory default settings to the decoder.
So far the above two things have fixed 100% of my problems.
That how I almost always fix the problems with my Locomotives. Dirty track and Dirty wheels are the cause of almost all Decoder problems. If that still doesn’t do it I reset it. Glad you got the problems fixed.