Hi,
I understand that a loc. motor wire contacts should not be connected anywhere to the chassis in DCC operations.
When I check my motor contacts with a meter I see that there is about 47Kilo ohm resistance between the contacts (brushes) and the shaft that goes through the motor. There is no way I can insulate the motor shaft from the brushes. The shaft is mounted inside the metal motor housing. So it is all metal on metal.
Can anybody help me.
I have a Minitrix 12860 loc and would love to make it run in DCC operations.
Thanks,
Abe
P.S. Does anybody know where I can have it done? I have a TCS Z2 decoder.
Abe, you might try posting this question on the N scale board here. Here's one company that does custom decoder installations:
http://www.tonystrains.com/index.html
and there are plenty of others. Also, if you search on "minitrix dcc" there are lots of articles. Wish I could be more helpful, but I haven't had an N scale engine disassembled in about 20 years.
abe, that high a resistance is most likely from carbon dust off the brushes as they wear (I assume the locomotive has some miles on it. I also assume that you disconnected everything from the brush terminals before making this measurement.)
You may be able to blow the dust out (gently - do not used high pressure compressed air as it may damage the fine wires in the armature) or you can wash it out with contact cleaner (the non-lubricating kind.) Personally, I wouldn't worry at such a small leakage. At 48k, the leakage at 12 volts would be only 1/4 of a milliamp
Jim