Sometimes you need a hammer (figuratively)

[chadbag]

Last year  bought a (new) Arnold (Hornby) HN2160, which is a DB BR 152 (ES 64 F EuroSprinter freight model) in the "Porsche" special livery.  It was on a close-out sale and was reasonably priced for a new German locomotive.  I tried it in DC mode when I first got it -- lights would work but the motor would not.  I popped the body shell and did not see anything obvious as a problem (broken wires etc).  I put it aside to figure it out later.  (Since shipping between the US and Germany is expensive, and it was a close-out price, I did not want to bother dealing with the hobby shop I got it from as I figured I could eventually fix it).

 

That "eventually" was this week.  I tried it with the DC plug and a DCC decoder (just in case the DC plug had a fault).  No dice.  In both cases, lights work, but the motor would not even attempt to go.  I took it apart and did not see anything obvious on this second inspection.  (As an aside, it was a PITA to take apart and the build quality is rather mediocre -- later Hornby based Arnold I have are much better).   I traced the motor wires and associated on-PCB traces and thought that one of them did not have continuity and one did.   I re-soldered the wires from the motor to the PCB just in case there was a bad solder joint.  No dice.   The paths on the PCB were hard to follow and I decided I would try directly connecting the pin on the DC/DCC plug/decoder socket for the motor wire that I thought did not have connectivity all the way through, connecting that pin and the spot on the PCB where the motor wire lead to the motor, so in effect, a direct link from socket to motor.  I did that, and still no dice.  I tested the other path again, and this time there was no continuity.  The original tests either were invalid by accidentally touching something with my prope in addition to what I was trying to test, or something else had gone wrong.   In the end, I also soldered a direct wire from the other motor pin on the socket to the spot on the PCB where the wire to the motor is attached.  Now it runs just fine in DC and DCC modes (with DC plug / decoder installed respectively).  I may need to re-do it to re-route the wires as the way the wires are routed now, the bottom piece of the plastic body frame no longer is snug against the PCB in the middle, and it appears this makes the track power pickup flaky as the bogies/trucks have little bent brass strip "springs" that rub against spots on the PCB and this uneven mating of the plastic body frame to the PCB seems to be cause intermittent contact in some cases.  Right now I think only one set of trucks is supplying power some/most of the time as when it goes through points and hits an unpowered frog you get a slight hesitation as a very quick momentary power loss to the motor is experienced.  So I may find a spot on the PCB I can drill a hole in and route the wires in the middle of the PCB and out instead of through a shallow cutout I made on the side of the PCB and under the edge of the PCB.

 

So the hammer was to just forget about the PCB traces for the motor and install my own wiring.  I spent enough time trying to figure out the path and where it was broken and finally decoded to just hammer it with the direct wires.

 

[gavino200]

1 hour ago, chadbag said:

 and it was a close-out price, I did not want to bother dealing with the hobby shop I got it from as I figured I could eventually fix it).

 

 

Nothing wrong with direct wiring unless you're concerned about it looking "stock" for resale. I'm curious, what is a "close-out" price. Is that a synonym for "discount" "reduced", "clearance" "sale", etc?  Or is there some sort of sweet-spot time to buy a new loco to get the best price?

[chadbag]

Basically a close out price is a clearance price.  Lowered price to move the last of the inventory.

 

Regarding the hammer.   If that is what it takes.   I’d rather try and find and fix the problem than do something that requires physical modifications and more hassle or (as of now) reduces the reliability (in this case due to how the wire is routed making the track power pickup a little flaky — should be solveable by drilling a hole in the pcb and rerouting the wire)

 

but of it takes a hammer then why not? 

[gavino200]

 

Stop!.........Hammertime   🙂

[cteno4]

Sorry just had to be the 472,124,877th person to show this...