FRIED MY MTH PS-2 DIESEL BOARD

Contact me if you want to save some money.

Henning,

Always like saving money.

I can't find your email so please send me your phone number to my email

thanks,

samparfitt@fuse.net

ps: sorry I didn't have 2 ps-2 board kits.  Like I said, I was only stupid once!

I don't think MTH will sell you the boards, you have to send to them for board replacement.

Also, you still can do this with PS-2 3V boards.  There are several post on how to if you do a search.

But yes, MTH cost for this repair is high.

I also do these repairs and sell parts.  G

Somehow, this doesn't ring right.  How could a hot track damage a board?  If it was heat, I would think there would be other damage.  If the poor connection, an insulated gap is even poorer.  My first reaction would be to check internal wiring.

RJR, I agree.  There is a lot to question with respect to what happen, also is this a ABA with slave.  But old 5V boards do die.  So assuming it is dead, the fix is to go PS-2 3V

Because if this is Slave, I don't think the PS-3/2 will work with the PS-2 Slave.  Unless the stacker board can deal with it.  I am not sure if all that has been addressed yet.  The stacker board still has some issues with flash code and will not fix every PS-2 3 or 5V board yet.   G

RJR, I agree.  Something else may have been going on.

George,

My understanding is that the 3 volt and 5 volt slave boards are the same.

Hmm...  I'm with Barry, I thought the slave boards were still the same as well.

That's good information, and it makes sense that might be the case.  I'll have to keep that in mind.

They are the same.  But PS-2 and PS-3 are not the same.  The guts of the PS-3/2 are PS-3.  So you could not replace a PS-2 diesel board in a lead A with a PS-3 Diesel and expect the Trail A PS-2 slave to work.  Even though both PS-2 and PS-3 ABA use a 10 pin harness.

So I am not sure if the stacker board can still drive a slave properly.  The PS-2 slave boards can have issues as it stands now.  G

One would think the best move here is a 3V PS/2 with the 5V connectors.  I know that works with the slave boards.

Hence my original post  G

Thanks for all your important input on this subject.

John is going to investigate it and find out what needs to be done.

ps: sure glad that I posted this thread!

If you are doing work, get a PS-2 Diesel kit.  You swap connectors and install new 4 ohm speaker and new 2.4V Battery with the new charge harness.

If a tech does it, he would do the same but can use the individual boards and parts vice the kit.

I do it all the time.  The large ABA have plenty of room for this.

Pretty soon the PS-2 3V will dry up.  At that point the PS-3/2 boards while be the only solution.  The flash programs should all be up to date by then.....I hope.  G

Just saw you sold your PS-2 kit in the forum....some one gave you bad advice.  G

George, that's my leaning as well.  I did send an email to Jeff to see what his take on this is.  I know the 3V board works as a replacement, I don't know about the PS/3 Stacker for a slave unit...

It was me giving myself bad advice.

That was my mistake.  I assumed, after reading the manual, that the one board would be powering 4 motors and not just the front two.  Ignorance is not always bliss!

Already agreed to sell the unit to Kevin and I can't go back on my word. 

Bummer: well, at least it's not a lot of money.

Kevin might understand.  He can read these post.  I would certainly not buy it from you, realizing this error.  Honorable on your part.

The good news is that you can get it repaired, but how about the symptoms?  How do you know your board is even bad?  Did you try running the Lead A by itself conventionally?  G

I made the assumption that the board was bad since the engine when dead (no sound, nothing) after going over the 'hot' spot.

I just put the lead engine on the track (by itself) and says 'no engine found'.  I also tried re-adding it: same results. 

Thanks for the suggestion, though, as I assumed the trailing A unit would have no affect on the lead engine.

MMMM: just noticed that you said 'conventionally' (need to be more observant).  There's only one 'on/off switch on the bottom of the unit.  In the off position, same results.

When all else fails, read the instructions.

The manual says the on/off switch is for the smoke.

That jogged my memory that I need to power the engine up using a variable rheostat, but the results were still the same.

"Conventionally" means you have no TIU in the picture, just a transformer to the tracks.  That's usually a good test, if it doesn't do anything without DCS, it's most likely got a problem.

It'll run fine without the other units, you can run it alone.

It's off topic, but:  I just noticed that my email notifications of this thread are only giving me a portion of each post.  IS this something new?

Here's what I see for longer messages, yes they are being truncated.  Of course, that may have been his edit of the topic, I just noticed this reply was edited.

I looked at some others, my emails have the complete message text and even photos for many of them.

John,

Affirmative on the DC current:

First, I ran it through the variable on the TIU and then, to be sure, I ran it directly off an old flat face type V transformer.

And?? same? If using the var DCS channel you must turn off the dcs signal. Even a good engine will come up dark & silent. However no sound  or lights using old flat face V is not good but that still doesn't mean the board is fried. Are you comfortable taking shell and taking a peek inside?

You want to run it with out the DCS TIU in the loop, unless you are familiar with how to shut the DCS signal off.

Some times a PS-2 board can get an address out of range.  If it runs conventionally, there is hope.  If you power it up do you hear the relay click?  G

Gregg,

Here's the overall view and views, from each side, of the boards.

=======

GGG,

Having her on the track with just the type V transformer, she never makes any noise, nada.  I never saw any smoke come out and the boards don't have a burnt smell (not sure how they get that smoke in those chips but, once it comes out, they never work again :[]  ).  

Funny, my 70 year old Lionel still work like they were just built!

The conventional failure is a very bad sign, not many 5V boards come back from that far gone.

About the only thing I could test is to make sure there's continuity between the center rail rollers and the red bundle of wires tied together with the speed nuts. Same with the black bundle and the truck grounds.

There is a voltage reg attached to the frame  that has 3 wires... Red yellow & black. The silver part of the reg must be insulated from the chassis. Maybe check that out.

Since you have it apart make sure all the plugs are tight.  

I would have no hesitation sending the engine to John or George.

It happens.  Sometimes smoke comes out, sometimes they have a hi current short, other times they just are not responsive any more.  Most likely you had a voltage difference across the pin and possible a voltage spike got it.

It is not to hard a repair.  If Kevin doesn't take your kit, you can send it to me and I would repair for you.  For what ever reason, I do repair a lot of E-8 ABA and the FEF Northern where the 5V dies.   Others also.

This engine has plenty of room to mount the new PS-2 3V and battery.  G

Gregg, over the last 70 years ( got my first in 1941), I have had problems with my Lionel locos, most commonly with the E-units.  Several now have ACRUs & 2 have PS2; the latter don't run as well as new stuff.

I don't understand how a loose track pin could cause the failure, or did you-all already decide that was a red herring?

As I noted above, I don't either.  It's possible that the pin was so loose it caused sparks, which caused a small power surge that was enough to apply the final coup-de-grace to a old 5-volt board.

Many times those 5V boards die with no obvious reason.  The loose pin is unlikely to have been the cause.

I just want to thank everyone that has helped in resolving this problem.

Being a big wuss, I've decided to have John fix it (I've already made enough mistakes, don't need to screw this up).

John was the first to help me so I'm just going to send him the two A units and the ps2 kit.  Kevin (who, initially, bought my ps2 kit) saw my dilemma and graciously said that I could keep the kit.  Much thanks to Kevin.

Great.  This should all end well for you.  G