I'm having a problem with my father-in-law's 6 year old Premier Chessie SD50, which I believe is a 3V Ps2 model. This engine is run frequently, and had been running normally until last night when the rear can motor (with the tach reader) stopped working. In both conventional and command modes, the rear motor fails to respond to power and DCS throttle increases. As expected, when you increase power, the front can motor takes off like crazy (because the tach is seeing no movement, sending additional volts to the motors), but the rear doesn't move. I tried a factory reset, but the symptoms persist. I should note that the sound, smoke, lights and all other features are working normally.
I have a feeling that the rear motor is dead. This engine has somewhat of a checkered history. When it was new from the factory, poor wire management during assembly allowed wires to get wrapped around the rear motor's armature beneath the flywheel. It was jerky out of the box, but this was my in-law's first "modern" engine, so he continued to run it, figuring it just needed to be broken in. After an hour or so of operation, the engine stopped working. He brought it to me, and I was able to untangle the wires from the armature and repair those that had their insulation rubbed off. I then had him send it to MTH because although it was running, it didn't have the smoothness you'd expect from PS2...mainly because the rear motor seemed to need more power than the front, starting a second or two after the front motor started turning. MTH sent it back, saying everything checked out and it was running within acceptable parameters. Remarkably, it continued to run for 5 years and has 3000 scale miles/180 hours on it. However, now the tach motor won't run.
Any advise/troubleshooting tips would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
