cooked a 10 wheeler?

Dan, Need the product number to answer your questions.  Does sound like a 5V board though.  G

It's 30-1278-1. It was on the track 20 to 30 seconds then it popped. Great looking engine.

I had an engine do that so I unplugged the smoke unit in the engine.  The engine ran fine after that so there must have been an issue with the smoke unit/fan.

Not saying this IS your problem but at this point would it hurt if you unplugged the smoke unit and gave it another go?

Open the tender and check.  If the battery is white, good chance it was dead anyway (over 11 years old).  Does the engine draw high current when powered up?  G

White Battery, Yes. As as far as the current draw, not sure how to check. In convensional mode, when I power up the track the board in the tender humms but nothing happens.

I did unplug the smoke/light wire and the fan and nothing happen there either.

Not a good sign, I suspect it's probably time for a tech to take a look.  Never a good sign when smoke comes from the 5V board set, at least in my experience.

I installed a Loco Sounds board, no smoke or lights hooked up. The speaker buzzes up to 2 volts and the whistle starts from there and about 30 seconds later it trips my brick. MTH 750 with controller.

Sounds like something shorted to the frame.  Check the wire and the speaker closely, they have been known to fail and the wires are close to the frame as well.  My guess is you'll find something shorted to the frame.  You might fire up the meter and check all the wires in the harness to the locomotive frame with the tether plugged in.  NOTHING but the wheel connection should have any connection to the frame of the locomotive.

You wouldn't happen to have a PS2 steam kit, might be time to gut and start over.

Are you going to do the upgrade?  If you're a member of the MTH RR club, you get them for $150, that's cheaper than the distributor price for them. 

If this is just a shorted wire, it will be easier to fix the issue and put in a new PS/2 board set.

Do you know that the loco sound board is good?  You need to be careful with a direct swap like that.

Popping the Z-750 breaker is not good.  You can put a VM in the amp meter mode, in series with your transformer as a way to measure current draw.  It is one of the advantages of the Z-4000.  I can see problems right away and immediately cut power.

I would measure the resistance of the speaker.  Chance it is shorted.  Especially as the internal wire from the speaker goes to the terminal pad.  Sometimes they touch the frame of the speaker.  G

Did a PS2 swap in a Loco soumds GS4 bantum a while back, board work when I took it out. I'll check out the speaker. I did test the motor, it runs fine.

Do either one of you have a kit I couls buy? I can do the swap but very hard to get the kits myself. I think one of the plug is wired wrong, that's what pop the original board and I think to cut it all back, rewire would work. I did check the motor with a dc transformer up to 18 volts both ways and it worked fine. I might need some advice to check the smoke sysstem later.

So, I unhooked the tender from the cab and still got the same problem. I next unhooked all the wire harnesses from the board and looked for a shorted wire, couldn't find one. I checked the speaker and swapped the speaker for known good one, same problem. I found a PS2 kit and installed over this last weekend, good news - runs like a champ. I'm still not sure if it was a bad 5 volt board or a miss wired harness (I have no schematic for this engine) and I didn't have the tender shell off when it popped so I don't know where the smoke came from. All in all more work than I wanted but I still have a pretty cool 4-6-0, now with a 3 volt board and soon a new BCR.

Dan

Nice.  Most likely the 5V Board failed.  G

That was my first thought. The person I bought it from said it was a shelf queen, he was selling for an estate and not sure it was ever run.

Dan

My money is also on the 5V board.