Does anybody know the procedure for removing the boiler shell from a Spectrum N&W J class loco? I need to access the motor to see why it runs beautifully, but will suddenly drop to a crawl, runs very smoothly but with a faint motor "growl", but with slight "goose" of the throttle, it takes off and runs normally for an indefinite period of time. Also, when this happens, the headlamp flickers very slightly, but still runs smoothly, but VERY SLOW. Due to slightly excessive motor noise, I suspect armature bearings may need lube. Have removed every screw I can find, but shell won't budge! Any ideas??
Also, when this happens, SMALL increases in throttle have NO effect. You gotta rapidly goose the throttle to get it to run normally. Seems definitely electrical, not mechanical. Also, running only DC.
The motor is burried in the split frame of the loco. You have to completely dissasemble the loco to even see the motor bearings.
It sounds like one of two problems.
One could be that the motor is just getting tired. It sounds like a motor that the commutator is clogged with carbon or the brushes are worn out. If you can blast it at full throttle for a while, it may burn the carbon out of the commutator. If that doesn't help, it is time for replacement. The carbon also builds up from over oiling. The oil leaches into the motor and gumms things up.
The other is a problem I fixed on a friends loco. There is an idler gear that is between the worm gear and the main geared driver that has too much side to side play. The idler gear can slip to one side far enough and the driver slips to the opposite side far enough that the gears dissengauge. This happens on loco's with a lot of runtime on them. It requires dissasembly and shimming of the gears.
This loco is only a little over a month old, and has relatively little run time. This problem did not exist at all until the last week. Ran great up until then. When it switches into "slow mode", it simply doesn't SOUND mechanical. No unusual noise, except a nearly inaudible growl, and runs perfectly. Best slow speed you ever saw, at HALF THROTTLE! Sounds like the old days when power packs had "pulse power" for slow speed.
wobblinwheel
Out of curiosity did you think to look here?
http://www.bachmanntrains.com/home-usa/references_2010.php
or directly http://www.bachmanntrains.com/home-usa/dwg/dwgs/N821X-IS001.PDF
T.J
If your loco is only a month old, why go thru the agony of problem solving hit or miss when you
can send it back for warranty claim repair or replacement,free of charge,plus shipping of course.
i have always been treated fairly and proffessionaly in any &all dealings.
regards&later KEWATIN
Anybody got any idea why some of MY posts on this topic are MISSING??? Seriously, hasn't ANYBODY (successfully) removed the shell from this loco??? Once again, instruction/ parts breakdown doesn't help! And no, I don't want to send it back, as I've done just too much detail work on it.
The parts explosion shows exactly what you need.....you just need to look at it carefully.
Remove the two screws under the cab, one on each side of the drawbar. Then the shell lifts up and foward to remove. Pretty simple actually.
I have had motor slow down happen on several Bachmann locomotives, with the small can motor. One responded to cleaning with CRC electronic cleaner, injected with a syringe and then a "high speed blow out". As has been suggested.
However, a recent purchase was made worse by doing this. I didn't want to do it, but I pressed the flywheels off and opened the motor up. No brush/oil deposits were found, but I did have a winding with one coil pinched under the thrust washer on the motor shaft, opposite the brush end. It was close enough to the motor shaft, that under load it would "ground" to the the motor shaft. The armmature was tested with a VOM for grounds, shorts and open coils, but tested OK. Why? No pressure on the thrust bearing when not installed. The engine didn't fail in one direction, which makes sense, because the armmature moves against it's thrust bearings depending on the direction of rotation.
If you have a ammeter on your layout (if running DC) you'll see the currect draw go up when the loco slows down, mine went from 0.2 A to 0.4 A.
Once put back together, the motor runs very good now and draws 0.1 A. I think the motor winding machines are a bit "sloppy" and the QC maybe lacking too. If I were you, I would contact Bachmann and get a new motor or loco. Charley.
Skipgear, I removed the two screws under the cab, and tried to lift. while doing so, the "floor" of the cab tried to move with it, almost as if glued in place. After some serious pulling-up on the cab, I realized it wasn't going to happen. The front of the boiler is loose, moves up and down a little (as if in a "notch"), but the REAR of the boiler/cab is held firm, with screws removed. Tender drawbar removed, rear truck removed, no more screws to take out, that I can see! Maybe if I pull HARD ENOUGH, and something breaks, I'll at least find out what was holding it! Simple motor and worm lubrication should NOT be this difficult!! And yes, when the motor slows, the amp draw is tremendous, sometimes tripping circuit breaker in power pack, if I don't "goose" the throttle to get it back to speed! I'm also worried about those odd wires running to the tender that the "black color" is rubbing off of, exposing what appears to be BARE WIRE? Could that not be a PROBLEM?? Why no "real" insulation?
No real insulation because the wires are more flexible with just the laquer coating.
The floor of the cab should come with it. It is part of the boiler.
Here is a picture with the boiler off....
http://www.spookshow.net/files/bachjmech2.jpg
Thanks for the picture! It appears that maybe I have to pull BACK on the bottom rear of the cab to make it unlatch, and then lift up? Also, can I lube the motor and worm gear without separating the frame halves? I have found that a teeny bit of Labelle (thick, but liquid) gear lube really works well on the armature bearings. You should hear the difference it made on my Spectrum 2-8-0! By the way, the motor on this J is quite noisy compared to the other one I have.
I had a similar problem after removing the shell (see post ,another J question)it was a intermittent shorting of the wires which had cracked the varnish and frayed.when I dissembled the engine and separated the wires on the test bench it ran fine.
Unable to remove the boiler shell, I decided to remove the tender shell and inspect the wiring. WOW! Each wire looked like a "brass paint brush" where it was soldered to the (gizmo they were soldered to). Clearly a case of possible shorts! Since all six appeared to be soldered (but very frayed, with stray strands everywhere), I decided to just coat the wires at the joints with thin Super Glue. Before glue dried, I tucked in all the stray wires where they belonged. The glue held them firm, and kept the wires apart. Then I gobbed some clear silicone over the solder joints for good measure. I then painted each wire from tender to cab with flat black paint. So far, so good! No apparent motor problems! (I'm keeping my fingers crossed) Obviously ****-poor soldering, and sub-standard wire! If I can ever get the shell off, it would be my intention to replace all six of these wires with decent (properly insulated) wires.....
Well, everything seemed to work for the longest time, but last night, when I tried to BACK into a siding, the motor started acting up again. Seems that "backing up" initiated the problem! Do we still think it's the MOTOR? No amount of "fiddling" withe the tender wires seems to matter. My next move was to run the loco at high speeds in REVERSE for an extended period of time. After bucking & jerking for a while, it began to clear up, and now it's running normally again. What gives??
Ran it again tonight for about an hour or so, with no problems. The motor is getting noisier now. Still think some lube on the armature bearings might help. Ideas?
Lube on the motor bearings is more than likely what caused all this in the first place. The oil leaches onto the armature, then the brushes and causes them to gum up, filling in the slots in the comutator causing the problems you are seeing.
The easiest fix is crank up the throttle and let the loco run at full throttle with no load. This will burn out the crud in the commutator slots in most cases.
Well, the J has finally CRAPPED OUT! While backing up (as usual) the loco again switched into the "slow mode" and after "goosing" the throttle, it began running normally, for a while. Then she stopped. After a few of the usual throttle spikes, I noticed SMOKE coming from the TENDER. After removing the shell from the tender, I saw the two "coils?" at the very front of the circuit board were black and burned up. Does anyone know what those two copper wire-wound coils do? They seem to be wired directly to the power feed from the tender wheels, on the red (positive?) side. Could this indicate the problem was on the board?? Nothing on the tender wires seemed to have gotten hot, nor the plug or socket. Also, any ideas which two, of the six wires on the plug supply voltage only to the MOTOR? I need to test the motor, to see if it's ok. Ideas?
WOW! I just noticed that Bachmann has "sold out" of the the circuit boards! Both the tender board AND the loco board (the one with the wiring harness attached). You suppose they've been having PROBLEMS?? Obviously, if I send it back, I WON'T be getting MY LOCO back, and I can't get the parts to fix it. Looks like a real "Catch 22" to me! Guess I'll be calling the Service Dept. to see what they can do.....
Those are RF chokes which are used to suppress interference (static) on radio and television signals. Did you get a yellow page with the locomotive, "Important Notice" at the top? It describes what they're for, along with a few capacitors.
They're not necessary to make the engine run, and may cause trouble with non-NMRA DCC decoders. They can be removed. The yellow page tells you to go to a web page to remove them. I've never been there, but this is it, www.bachmanntrains.com (this site, actually), if you don't have the yellow page. Then go to E-Z Command FAQ. I hope it tells you what to do to remove them and rewire the board.
However, if the motor drew enough current to "smoke" them it may be toast too. I think you have a grounded coil on that motor (intermitten), as I described in my first post of this thread. If you can rewire the board and the motor is OK, it may not be for long. The chokes protected the motor, but if you remove them, well your "up the creek" if overloaded again. Send it back if possible or at least give Bachmann a call. It may be too late, since you've worked on it, but they can see on this board how hard you tried to live with the problem, and may give you a break.
Regards Charley
Charley, do you know the best way I can test the motor? Should the loco run without the tender [board] attached, or do I jump some pins in the plug to complete the circuit? OR can I apply track voltage to two of the (six) wires on the plug to make it run? WITHOUT blowing the headlamp? I have to say, the wiring on this plug is a MESS!
I can check my tender.I did rewire mine and I think I might have removed some tender guts,But not sure.Can't check tonight ,but I will tomorrow.
Bob
According to the DCC wiring diagram that's on the parts diagram for the N&W J, leads 1 (orange) and 5 (grey) should be the motor leads. The pin-outs on the PCB are numbered left to right 8124567, no #3. I think that the colors and numbers are NMRA standards, but others that use DCC can verify that. See if you have that diagram, lots of info there. You should be able to "jumper" the motor leads to your DC power supply and test it. That is, unless the RF chokes have shorted the PCB. You may have to unsolder or cut the leads to isolate the motor from the PCB. I haven't been in that tender, YET! The line drawing should be accurate, it is, on other Bachmann tenders that I've looked into. Although, I remember reading on one of the forums, that one of Bachmann's diagrams is "off" regarding the DCC wiring. Sorry, I don't know which.
RGW may have the rewire you need to get the loco moving again, but if you are still drawing high current, the motor's in-trouble and may fail completely. The only way to test the motor armmature is to take the motor apart. That is not for the novice, but that's how I learned to do it. However, when I started an Atlas 2-8-2 cost $28 (still a lot of money in 1970), not $100-200-300 etc, like loco's cost today. I hope this helps.
Regards Charley.
Charley, I found the info on the removal of the "inductors" (chokes) and capacitors on the "faq" section of DCC section on this site. It shows clear photos of the chokes, but the arrow pointing to the caps is "cut off" from view. Can't even tell what they look like. Says if I remove chokes, I must replace with a jumper. Says I can cut out the caps with no problem, if I knew where they were! I don't see anything on the board that even resembles what I thought capacitors look like. I do see little teeny gray square things labeled "C1, C2, C3". One is much smaller than the other two. I think I could fix this thing if I had a proper SCHEMATIC, and not just DCC wiring diagram. For some reason, I still think the motor is ok. It just ran SO WELL, and drew so little amperage when running normally. I've still never gotten the shell off, but while the tender got really hot, the top of the loco was not even warm. From what I've seen, just removing the motor is a real SOB! I have no problem working on the motor. Done 'em before. Wonder if those little wires in a phone cord would work as a replacement for these crappy ones?
I believe a person could remove the printed circuit board from the tender and connect the wires right from the brass strips that contact the wheel pick ups. Then remove the connector on the engine and wire it direct. You also could run wires from the tender leads threw a resister for the head light( 4 wires between engine and tender) this part could be savaged from a diesel engine.
I do not think directional lighting is important ,who runs J in reverse.
Just my thoughts, other people may have a better one.
RGW
I'm not worried about a backup light either. Aux. tender already has one. Wonder what size resistor would work? I also don't care if the headlight stays on in reverse, either. Looks like I should be able to run headlamp wires directly to frame halves, or motor leads, install proper resistor, and then only need two wires to tender for power pickup. Two MUCH BETTER wires! I do still like the headlamp coming on at very slow speeds (as it does now, or DID). I wonder if a resistor would prevent that?
I called Bachmann service today. Very "robotic" response: "send it in". Really wanted to talk to someone who actually WORKS on these things, somebody who KNOWS SOMETHING! I don't need to tell you how THAT worked out!! I'm beginning to think you guys on this forum are my only hope! $45 for "inspection, and it's only a month old.......$70 from Trainworld, and I'll have all the parts I need, I guess.
For the resister you could use the circuit board from some diesel engine just cut off the led light and connect the light wires to it and then connect the power. I do not think there is room in the engine for a resister,so you would still need 4 wires from the engine to tender
when you call Bachmann ask to talk with the repair Department, explain that you have a technical question.I have found them to be helpful in the past.
I did speak to repair dept. Got a woman who said "send it in", and since I may have "abused" it, it would cost $45 for inspection, repair, or replacement. As I've converted this one to a "freight" version, with doghouse and weathering, I'm not sending it in.I can fix this thing if I had the right parts. Parts Online is out of stock, was hoping repair dept had them. Once again, had no luck with that one. She did transfer me to Parts, but all I got was a recording.
I think the 1st thing you need to do is remove the boiler shell, it took me some time to figure out to remove mine.(I have since forgot how I did it but it has something to do with the cab floor and a plastic connector there) From there you should be able to test the motor out,you should be able to see which leads go to the motor and the light.I believe you can test for the light lead with a 1.5 volt battery,I think that is a correct voltage for LEDs and should not harm it. Maybe others gave give a second opinion on this and correct any errors in my voltage. hope this helps. It may be necessary to remove the engine side circuit board it is equally as completed as the tender side that you already saw.Some time it is easy to replace wiring than to patch in the old ones.
Once again maybe other have a better idea for a fix.
RGW
You need a motor. The light board let go because the motor brushes wore out and shorted. It has been documented before in other loco's with this motor.
If it is just the chokes that melted, cut them out and bypass them, replace the motor and put it back together.
By-passing the tender will work if you don't have any plans to convert it to DCC later. You will loose tender pickup and the loco will not run very good at all. You will still get directional lighting (it's an LED, it only works when the polarity is correct). For a resistor, use around an 800 to 1000 ohm to be safe and make sure you get the polarity right or it will only light when in reverse.
Talk to somebody in service, explain that you have superdetailed the loco and do not want to loose your work. I have had that happen and they told me to pull the shell and keep it when sending the loco in. They returned a mechanism just as I sent them.
I hadn't noticed that service pricing jumped that substancially. Wow, almost double in some cases.
No kidding about the pricing! Spectrum was $45, while other stuff was cheaper, but I forgot the price. I never intend to go DCC on this N scale setup. I have an HO scale layout upstairs that is DCC, sound and all that. I just have the N scale downstairs just to "play with". Never counted on my newest loco to just die on me! I also now have many dead sections on my track since this happened. No power on the "common" side of several of the blocks. Can't figure for the life of me why it didn't trip the circuit breaker in the MRC power pack! Trainworld still has these on sale for $69. I may just buy another for parts, since I have two J's on my layout. I really want to try to keep the drive train on this loco, since I have fine-tuned it to work with some of the tight turns on my small (hollow-door) layout. I have adjusted the tension on the pilot trucks to illiminate the occaisional derailments on turnouts, also added weight to the trailing trucks and tenders. I also have adjusted the driver spacing on front and rear driver sets to make it track easier on my inside track, which has 9 1/2" radius curves. This is why I don't want just a "replacement". Also, I just like working on them anyway. I would like to experiment on doing away with the circuit boards, and using the tender for motor power pickup only. From what I've seen, there's plenty of room in the loco for a resistor for the headlamp, same for the back-up lamp running off tender power pickup. Only two wires to the loco....."I have a dream" lol
Well, I finally got the shell off! It seems there was a piece of black electrical tape stuck to the inside back of the shell that was wedging the frame in there. A little prying under the cab, and it lifted off. When I separated the six wires from one another to figure out which two went to the motor, three wires broke away from the tender plug with no effort whatsoever. Two of these wires were the motor wires. Applying track power to these wires did nothing. After separating the red and black (motor) wires from the boiler-mounted circuit board, I applied power directly to the motor, and it ran perfectly. I am thinking about running the motor wires directly to the frame halves, leaving the tender-to-frame wires intact, insuring I'll have tender pickup for the motor also. The circuit boards will remain for lighting purposes only. This will eliminate TWO wires going to the tender! I'm also wanting to go ahead and replace the remaining four tender wires with regular insulated wire. I've got some wire that would be perfect, but it's YELLOW (yuck). Gonna dismantle a modular phone cable to see what they look like........I'll keep you posted...oh, by the way, the blue headlamp wire broke from the engine-mounted board the second the wire was moved. They definitely need to improve their wire and soldering!
I would try to find some decoder wire somewhere instead of using the phone wire. The phone wire I think is a bit too stiff and you may have problems with it not being able to flex between the loco and tender....Mike
I use some thin wire I bought from my LHS it is red. I paint it flat black ,seems to work fine.
Well, I found some suitable wire, rewired the loco-to-tender (with only four wires). It was one tedious job, involving complete disassembly of the engine. I gotta admit this is a well engineered little piece of work. If quality control was a little better, this could be one of the best n scale steamers made. Motor is till acting up, but not as bad, or as frequent. With the motor leads wired directly to frame and tender, the motor power is pretty much bypassing the boards. At least I am fully convinced the motor is / was the entire problem, although wiring problems were inevitable. It's time to go to "plan B".......