Recently, I started back at my layout. I have a c424 atlas with a kato drive. I installed a digitax decoder. It ran great. now I have a strange noise. I have disassemble both drive boxes and found no problems. It seems to have plenty of power at the can motor. wiring doesn’t seem to be problem. Anyone think of what it might be?
First, please define for us what you mean by “strange.” Is it a grinding, thumping, whining, or what? Have you removed the shell to see if it still makes the noise when the shell is off? Perhaps the shell is pressing down on the decoder or something else and causing it to rub on the drive shaft. It might be the shell vibrating. There are a lot of possibilities, some of which could be traceable to the type of decoder you used and the type of DCC system.
yes Idid remove. The noise does sound like something rubbing. I can’t seem to find what it might be. There seems to be alot of room between the shell and componets. It sounds like a grinding noise with the shell on and a slight noise with out the shell.
Try lubricating the drive shafts at each point where they enter the gearboxes (front and rear), and at each end of the motor, with a very small amount of light-weight oil. Apply the oil with a toothpick. When you had the gear boxes opened up, did they appear to be dry and in need of lubrication? A heavier lubricant is needed on the gears. Also oil the axles where they enter the gearbox with the light-weight oil.
No. lubricantation was fine. All seems in order. Having a hard time with this one.
You mentioned a Digitrax decoder – which one did you use? If you have one of the newer models with BEMF or an adjustable frequency, you may need to adjust the decoder’s Configuration Variables to change the frequency or turn BEMF off. You’ll have to check the decoder documentation in this regard. Good luck.
If you don’t have the Digitrax Mobile Decoder User’s Manual, I suggest that you download it from the Digitrax web site and read through it. It’s in .PDF format, available from here –
is it possible the can motor bearings have play in them,and if so would it cause the motor to loose power? This just dosn’t add up to me.The decoder is a dz123. I use them in most of my engines and only ever had one go bad do to the engine drawing to many amps.
No, it’s not normal for a can motor to have free play in the bearings – if your’s does, you have a bad motor that was not properly lubricated or was just defective from the beginning. It can happen. Too much free play in the bearings can cause the armature to touch the surrounding magnets and short out.
If you contact Atlas and explain what has happened, they may send you a free replacement.
thanks found the problem. the flywheels had some how move down the motor shaft and were touching the ballast weights when you sped up to a curse speed. Never had that one before. Maybe someone my benifit for my experiance. Thanks for the help.
That’s a problem that I’ve never ran into before, but I’m glad to hear that it wasn’t a bad motor.
One of the members of our HO scale club had one of those plastic universal joints that are press fit into the flywheels break loose on an Athearn Genesis locomotive, causing the universal joint to just spin and not power the truck. He put some JB Weld on it, let it set for a few days, and the engine runs like new.