Is tmcc Odessy Lurch fixable

I have had the same issues and are for the same reason that some of the MTH 2/3 rail engines do the same thing. They are fixable. The issue is with the wheel sets and their gears not aligning properly. By design the actual wheel sets can be removed. The wheels are supposed to have play in them. The axel with the gear that is turned by the can motor is supposed to very little play in it. If it has too much play it causes the motor and gears to bind and the result is the lurching. There are two ways to fix it. Buy some very thin plastic washers or use pipe threading tape and install them on the side of the retaining pin between the plastic clear washer and the retaining pin. Also since the engines were built in the early 2000s I would also replace the grease were the worm gear is located. Mine was rather sticky and turning into a solid.    Hope this helps.

If I recall correctly you have a couple of options.  The lurch goes away if you up upgrade to Legacy due to Legacy being a true speed step where as the old TMCC was two/three speed steps at once when you turn the big red knob or you could send it Lionel for repair.  The lurch is a firmware bug but since It's been a long time since Lionel came out with the fix i don't know if it's still available.  Last you could gut the electronics and install ERR cruise commander with new railsounds.

I'm sure the experts will chime in with the correct info if I'm off my rocker.

You can fix the Odyssey lurch by replacing the motor driver board. Lionel has replacements for around 100.00.

Thanks for the suggestions and help. 

Is that for all Odyssey locomotives? Are the ones with on/off switches different?

Too bad Lionel didn't go with 100 steps like K-Line did. The various Lionel TMCC products can't be run together anyway with all the incompatible gear ratios so at least they would have been much smoother accelerating/deaccelerating pieces.

K line had better speed steps but really crappy electronics. They almost guaranteed to short out in a mater of a few weeks of running.

I would call ERR and get a replacement board. They are very reasonably priced.

I have a Lionel TMCC Erie pacific that almost jumps right off the track!

Will be replacing the older R2 board to rectify.

IMO, a better way to repair the Odyssey lurch than the replacement Odyssey board is to replace the Odyssey motor driver with the ERR Cruise Commander M.  This gives you more speed steps and much better low speed performance in everything I've put it in.  It's basically the same price as buying a new Odyssey board.

I attempted to put the Cruise M into a K Line B6, but the board is about a 1/16 inch too long to fit (vertical). Also it has the diode bridge mounted on the component side of the board, so there is little room for the bundle of wires that nestle in the original space there.

Ever do one?

Ken at ERR says "yep...too tight". Folks who have done it probably leave the rear of the engine sitting up a sixteenth. Looks funny.

John.

In my case I had just bought another CBQ U30C this was brand new.  Not only was it lurching, it was doing it at different speeds without any rhyme or reason. When I took the shell off I checked all the connections to make sure they were tight. Then turned the motors on each truck. I found that the front motor and gears were binding at certain angles.

The next thing I did was to remove the  access covers on the bottom of the truck assembly to make sure the wheel sets were sitting in the mounts correctly(2 3,4 ). The motor was still binding.

Next I pulled the motor and made sure the screws for the motor mount(21) was tight. At this point I discovered 2 things. The grease had become crusty/sticky and the pinion gear had to much left and right play(27)when compared to the other truck assembly. Cleaned and regressed and reset the pinion gear(27).

Motor was still binding but not as bad. What I did observed was when pressure was applied to the pinion gear it would move outward and the outside gear teeth would move from having full contact to barely any contact with the other gears (27). This turned out to be the source of the binding and lurching.

The fix:  Maybe this is a little out of the box, but this is what I did. Since I didn't have any washers that were thin enough. So I used thread tape that you use on pipes before you rethread the nuts or bolts to prevent leaks.

I pulled about 4 inches and then twisted it until it looked like thread.

I next: I wrapped it around the shaft between the clear plastic washer and the retaining pin.( I needed to close the gap by about an 8th of an inch ). This also left a little play but now the gear teeth now had full contact with the other gears. 

Reassembled and tested: Set the speed steps to 128 on my DCS remote and powered up. Crawled at one SMPH no lurching and continued to speed up to 30. no issues.

I then connected to a freight consist pulling about 20lbs.  At 1 SMPH no lurching slowly sped up to 30. Once again. no issues. Engine now runs smooth as silk.

I also found this thread which was some help.

https://ogrforum.com/t...-motor-thrust-washer

Actually, I did fit one of those in.  I modified the heatsink to give me a little more room. I separated the bundle of wires and stuffed them down between components.  It was a tight fit, but I was determined.

I put one in a Camelback as well and had to modify the heatsink mounting to make it fit.

Is it true the lurch doesn't show it's ugly head if you have Legacy???

I still see the power-on lurch with Legacy.

Ok, so much for that theory.

Chuck, I have done it, thanks to help from Bob Bartizek. You have to oval the holes in the heat sink that the triacs mount to so you can tip the board at an angle. This will allow the board to fit and allow the boiler to sit snug on the frame. I think I have a pic but will have to wait until I return from York.

Pete

Thanks, that or something like that is probably what John did too. I'll have to try it again and commit to modifying the heatsink. At the time, I thought about getting the new Legacy B6 instead, but this is more interesting fun.

Chuck, that's exactly what I did, the board ended up at an angle, but it all fit in, which was the object of the exercise.  Routing the wires took a little doing, but it will fit.

BTW, I have the Legacy B6, it's a really nice little locomotive, highly recommended.

Is the cruize commander M a change of sound or just to control the power, I would hate to lose the great sounds of this one by changing that out? 

The CC-M is strictly the motor controller with the added benefit of cruise control.  It changes nothing about the sounds.

CC-M is always my goto solution for bad sensors and broken magnets. Its not woirth the effort to fuss with any of that old tech

GunRunner,

Would that, the ERR, work with the CC1 Niagara Mohawk Engine - the 6-28069.

I get wheel hop only in reverse.

Kevin

Yes it would as that engine is DC motor with TMCC, but a wheel hop in reverse only sounds like a mechanical issue more then the ODY lurch.  I would be looking at the wheel bearings, side rods, and motor gear alignment with the axle gear, especially motor thrust.   G

I agree with George, if you have issues only in one direction, that's usually mechanical and not electronic.