I have just received a new BLI K-4. This is the 7th loco I have purchased from BLI and every one of them has been a terrific runner until now. I noticed it was stalling or even stopping when passing over a frog. I use Atlas turnouts with insulated frogs that I have not wired. I determined that the loco would stall when the front tender wheels passed over the frog. A few more tests revealed that this only happened when the left hand wheels passed over the frog. I inspected the trucks and saw that both front and rear trucks seemed to be set up for electrical pick up so I wondered why the rear wheels were not picking up the power when the front wheels were in contact with the frog. I opened up the tender and saw that the wire from the rear wheels seemed to be connected. I ran a whole series of tests in which I set the throttle to zero and turned on the bell. I would tip either the loco or tender left and right and side to side to determine when I would lose power. I discovered that the rear tender wheels were connected to the right side and the front wheels were connected to the left. I could tip either the loco or tender so the right hand wheels were off the track and the other would continue to feed power and the bell remained on. This did not happen with the left side. If I raised the left hand loco wheels off the track, the bell continued but if I raised the left hand tender wheels off the track, the bell shut off. Apparently I am not getting power from the left hand loco wheels. Tests with my other BLIs did not have the characteristic. I could raise the loco or tender on either side and the other unit would continue to draw power.
I was already way beyond my comfort level when I opened up the tender. I am always afraid that one of my ten thumbs is going to touch something it shouldn’t and real foul things up. I am even more uncomforable with removing the boiler to check the loco wiring. Before I take this step, I wanted to check if the BLI K-4 is different from their other types of locos or should
I have the newest version of the K4s, and I use the EZ-Track snap switches. I have experienced no problems with the loco traversing the frogs. I suspect that there is something weird about the wiring on your loco because the pair, loco and tender, are plenty long to get them over any frogs if all the wheels that are meant to be pickups are doing it.
I would not play with it unless you are quite certain what to look for. If BLI agrees by email to let you send it back, you should expect a turn-around of between 3 and four weeks. That isn’t bad.
I had this problem with my PCM T-1. The cause was a loose wire on the circuit board in the tender blocking the pickup from the drivers on that side - thus only the tender truck on one side was pickup up power, not a very large footprint, and it would stall easily. Correcting the loose wire resolved this issue.
If you are not comfortable with opening it up, Broadway will certainly fix it for you as it is a manufacturing problem. I feel I have the skill to look inside these things, but I was a bit apprehensive as the T-1 is the most expensive loco I own. BLI and PCM do one thing very right - they are easy to open up with a minimum of fuss. Unlike a lot of brass locos there aren’t tons of screws and detail parts connecting the pieces which need to separate.
My problem seems to be just the opposite. The tender is picking up power but the loco isn’t. When the front left wheels hit the insulated frogs, everything stops dead. If I put the loco on a non-insulated section of track, I can tip the loco so the left hand wheels are off the track but power continues as long as those tender wheels remain in contact. If I tip the tender so that the front left wheels are off the track, it shuts down. It seems to me the loco should continue to draw power so the engine doesn’t shut down when the tender wheels hit an electircal gap. I think I’m going to take the plunge and remove the boiler and check the pick up wire on the left side of the loco. I know I could return it to BLI for repair but I really don’t want to want 3-4 weeks to get this back.
This was purchased from Trainworld and $100 off their regular price. I am assuming this was a closeout and not a refurbished loco but I can’t say for sure.
No, I think you misunderstood - my problem was exactly the same, on the engineer’ side it was only pickup up from the tender, not the drivers.
One thing to easily check withotu taking anything apart - disconnect the cable between the loco and the tender. Look carefully at the rear of the loco where the pins are - if they are not all even (the driver pickups are the outermost pins) this could be where the problem is. The little pins can easily not be properly installed int he shell, allowing them to push back into the loco body rather than go intot he connector when you attach it. Unfortunately you will have to remove the boiler shell to get at this connector if that is indeed the problem.
Inside the tender, these wires go to small plugs which attach to the circuit board. Again, these plugs have little pins that have a tab that catches in a slot in the connector’s shell. On my T-1, one of these pins was installed backards in the shell, meanign the little tab had nothing to catch on to. When this connector was then plugged into the circuit board, the pin pushed back rather than attach to the circuit board. This was simple to fix, I just pulled the shell off the pin and pushed it back on the right way. With the tab properly latched, plugging it back intot e circuit board allowed proper contact and it worked.