Dead BB1

So what generally burns out ?  driver board ? It looks like there are 4 boards

inside the unit, and it doesn't look to hard to replace them...

 

So I thought I would see what my fellow formites thought...

Or maybe I should just send it in....

 

There are some good Lionel Service Centers that can check out what board or boards are bad and either repair the defective part or replace the board or boards. I do not think that Lionel is offering to repair engines that are out of warranty but you could check with them.

Have you checked to make sure that it hasn't picked up a stray piece of metal, or that one of the pickup rollers hasn't slipped out of position and is now shorting?

 I'll be more specific...

  The engine was running, it then went through a gargraves switch, stalled, then

  the breaker tripped.  I reset the breaker but nothing on the engine lights up.

  No marker lights, no head light, no motor humm... nothing.

  The layout does work with other engines.

  My gut feeling is that it's the driver board but you would think that the

  lights would still work....

If you have nothing at all then you most likely popped the power trace on the motherboard. No lights tell me no power to the receiver which equals no brains, hence nothing else works! You can get an RA and send to Lionel for repair (charge repair) turnaround 2-3 days. Out of curiosity, what type of circuit protection do you have on the layout?

Thanks....

  I'll pull the board and take a closer look at the trace.

  As far as protection. I'm just using the breaker on the MTH power supply.

  ( Z100 conventional controller ).  Would you recommend more ?

 

  I did find a big problem in the switch, The frog was badly worn, looks like

  a lot of engines were crashing into it. ( yes I bought it used )

  Also the part across from the frog has a wide gap. ( as discussed on another

  thread here. )  So as the engine entered the curved section to the common

  section, the engine just went straight and shorted out. More so in the 6 wheeled

  drivers than other type of engines.  So the glue is drying now. More testing later...

 

  thanks again for the advice...

 

I am a fan of the Lionel Direct Lockon (all biases aside). The device is a fact acting circuit breaker designed for 7 to 10 amps (with  switch inside the select the amperage). What is great about the lockon is that it does not require you to manually reset it. The LED's on the side are green when all is good and turn red as soon as there is a short. It will then try to reapply power after the breaker cools. If the short still persists it snaps open again.

 

We use them in Ohio at Lionel service, despite the ZW-C and 10 amp Powerhouses and the ZW-L that powers our test layout, I also have 6 of the Direct Lockons in the equation between the transformers and the track. (helps protect our power and YOUR trains).

 

Even though you are running a modern Z-1000, which has a user resettable circuit breaker I would suggest adding the Direct Lockon. This way, this type of scenario will never present itself again. (regardless of what you operate). These Lockons can be found under product number 6-35120. They list for $51.79. (I have no idea how we came up with that price?)

 

Thanks,

Mike

Trainman9-----Lionel recently serviced two engines that I have had for more than ten years.....but they didn't do it for free.  It cost me about $200.00 total.  Odd-d

Ya know what the biggest kick in the butt is ?

I was at the Lionel open house last week.

Of course I had no issues last week... Noooo

 

The train gods are not pleased with me and I'm

not sure what I did or did not do....

 

I looked at the main board as per Mikes suggestion, but found

nothing physically wrong. My LHS is going on vacation for a couple weeks

( the nerve of this guy ) so I'll get an RMA and get the engine fixed.

 

Thanks for all the help formites...

 

Bruce..