I got this engine late last fall and it ran flawlessly until this past Saturday (5/2/2020). It had an ongoing issue in that the rear coupler would not fire. I was somewhat content living with this as it remained closed and I was only using it on mainline service. Suddenly while running it the RED short light came on. On taking the engine off the track and examining the underside I noticed a frayed wire end sticking out from the rear truck. The following day I tasked myself with finding the root cause and hopefully a solution I could rectify. Upon taking off the shell it was apparent that the two wires that feed the rear electro-coupler were bunched up in the rear truck and the gears were chewing up the wire. To fix this I needed to remove the trucks side plate as well as remove the screws holding the can motor in place. Luckily there was enough wire still sticking out from the connector to work with. Step one I removed the connector from the coupler and soldered two wires to the connector and covered the solder joint with shrink tubing. Then I forced the shrink tubing away from the gears up into the engine area. Step Two I made the final solder connection to the wires that came from the boards.
I put the engine on the track it powered up but the electro-coupler would not fire. Back to the work bench and I un-soldered and switched the polarity of the wires, I guess it mattered. BINGO it worked and the couplers now fire from the CAB-2 controller. The only difficulty was re-plugging the connector to the coupler port. its tight in there and required an effort and some long needle nose pliers to complete the task. Overall the repair was conceptually easier than imagined. I love a happy ending.
Just a heads up for anyone else that might encounter the same issue. Did anyone else experience this?
