Had a few problems loading the engine into the original cab remote.
Took it over to Bob's house and he had no problems up loading the engine and all worked well at my house.
One thing I did do before going to Bob's house was to firmly attach the end of the antenna to the tender shell.
Originally, the end of the antenna wire was loosely connected to the tender shell.
I replaced the blackened bolt with a plain steel bolt plus I used a nut to secure the wire to the tender shell. This may have been the 'problem'.
Bob said 'they' were having trouble with radio reception and it looks like 'they' have solved it: the tender is isolated from the wheels, the wheels are insulated on both sides and a 4-way brass makes contact with the inside of the insulated wheels (see pic below).
Smoke problem:
This is my first TMCC engine and, all my contacts don't use smoke, this unit doesn't smoke in TMCC mode. I put the smoke switch in conv mode and she smokes (but no where near what my MTH engine do). Aux 1 + 9 is suppose to be for engaging smoke but it's not working. I'm using the ZW-C (with the 180w bricks added). I'm thinking that maybe the 18 volts isn't enough 'juice', especially if lighted passenger cars are also on the track. I put another brick on the B terminal, hoping it may draw more volts but nada. On the MTH, I'm using the Z-4000, which puts out 22 volts and, maybe that's why the MTH engines 'puff' like the 12" to the foot engines do! I'm a little reluctant to put 22 volts on the TMCC engine as the manual says don't go over 18 volts.
I'm assuming the following is the proper way to run the engine:
TR + 1 and throttle to get power to the track.
ENG + 81 and throttle to operate the engine.
I'm thinking the next step is to take the boiler off and look for some loose wires.
