does anyone know about why these little guys have to be nudge to get them going .i bought these at fdt .joe sent me another one and they both do the same thing ,also i ran a new test track plugged in my super chief to it . it did the same thing to both . he said the tracks have to be clean too. any ideas
With any short wheelbase lightweight power you’re probably going to get the same thing. Short wheelbase means it may all be in a dirty section of track at once, and the lackof weight means it cannot push down through minor dirt to pickup power. Clean the track and see how better it works. Probably it won’t work all that well at slow speeds no matter what you do, that is just the nature of the beast.
Clean the wheels, too. They may have corrosion that is inhibiting electrical pickup from the track, and cleaning the track alone is not going to improve operation if the wheels are partly to blame.
the test track is new clean . trackmobiles are new out of the box i seem to agree with weight problem that railphotog said
Anything can be dirty. Since the track has been out longer than the Trackmobile, wipe it down. the TM’s are Diecast, so weight isn’t as much as an issue. I have had them act up more on switches than straight track. If you have DCC, then you might adjust the CVs mentioned in the MRR review
Try CRC 2-26 (which improves electrical contact), or WD-40 in a pinch. Put a little on your finger then wipe the rails with what is on your finger (not much) and put the Trackmobile on it. Get it running to pick up a small amound of the WD or CRC, then see how it does. Adding some weight will help also. I know it’s going to hard to find someplace to add some, but any is better than none at all. (You might have to apply a mini drop of WD or CRC to any wheel wipers too.)
Sometimes clean track and wheels mean DRY track and wheels, which is also not good. WD or CRC is sort of like using Rail-zip but without the gunk that forms.
ok i will wipe down both track and trackmobiles plus where do you find the reviews to change cv 's at for mrr online unless it’s subsriber’s cotent .also i’m going to check voltage on the track to see if there any problems there. what have is a super chief .
IOn the MRR homepage. But I’kll just post it straight here:
thanks morgan i’ll adjust the the cv’s and see what happens .
I’d be interested to hear how it goes because I have one from Factory Direct Trains that’s DCC fitted, running on my DC layout. [hoping for DCC one fine day]
Mike
i adjusted the cv’s it did improve alot i ran on my layout and then on the club’s layout what i got is the same with both them still stalling . so i called bli up and told them what’s going on.they suggested several ideas to try out . and if didn’t work to send them back which i did .
A largely frivolous effort in my opinion, but we’ll see what happens. Why it shorts on straight track is beyond me, but it sounds like your still having power problems.
hey morgan what did i took it my club 's layout and it stalled on switches and trackage in our hump yard . we took the bottom off and checked the contacts on it made a few adjustments on it which did improve it . i’am not sure it’s the engine or trackage. the voltage to the track is correct .it when i contacted bli i asked them about track voltage as long as you have good voltage it shouldn’t be problem,but who knows .just trying to figure what’s doing it. if you other ideas i’am all ears.
The switch problem is related to the above mention of the short wheelbase. Its hitting the unpowered frog and not getting any problem. There’s no real way to fix this.
By the way: Hump Yard? Please tell me there are pictures.
i agree with you about it’s short wheelbase it really stinks when you go over swicthes the hump yard i’ll get pictures of it and post them. it took us amost 6 months to perfe
ct this yard alot of trail and error to get it right.
These turkeys are not too awfully large in the first place and there’s not a whole heckuva lot of room for a motor and any motor installed will, of necessity, have to be pretty small and most likely be a 3-pole at that. Sounds suspiciously like there is a cogging problem with the small motor and the only solution for a cogging problem is to keep an 0-5-0 switcher readily at hand!