I just had a brass,4-6-0 regeared and remotored because I could’nt get it to run at more than a scale 30mph.The slow speed running was fine ,very smooth at a crawl.Now with the new motor/gears I can’t get it to start smoothly,or crawl.It does’nt start moving until speed step 50.Should I send it back or try to break it in on a test track(the upper end speed is now improved,smooth and quiet),It has Tsunami sound but would it be OK to lay it on it’s back,run a couple of DC wires to it ,and look for some sort of bind?Or would running it on DC cause any problems with the DCC components?
It could be any number of things. I would bring it back to the person that remotored and geared it and tell them whats going on with it. It sounds to me that either something is binding or your decoder needs to be tweaked a little to get better low end responses.
At the same time, i wouldn’t give the person a hard time about it. Let them know what it’s doing now and see if it was doing it when they were finished with it. Binding would be the worst case, and decoder tweeking would be the best. If they installed the decoder, they may not have set it up at all (programed it). Ask and see if it was tested after remotoring etc. and how it acted on DC before the decoder was installed. That is something that should have been done BEFORE a decoder install. I am assuming that the person that fixed it also installed the decoder.
I ran the engine in forward and reverse,at different speeds,for 2 hours in each direction.No change in slow speed ability.Guess I’ll call the mechanic tomorrow
Anybody skilled in re-motoring and re-gearing should be able to get you very close to the performance you requested, independent of any decoder settings. DCers have been doing this for years, so my guess would be that the decoder values need adjusting.
Wayne