MRC ah601

Unless the item is still under warranty, charging a fee to inspect and repair is not unreasonable.

Sounds to me like your disappointment will probably  lead you to purchasing another ZW...which is not a bad thing.

Mark in Oregon 

It’s not paying the fee that bothers me, its taking the gamble they don’t have the parts to repair. Yes I’m leaning towards another old faithful zw.

Jsulli21 posted:

It’s not paying the fee that bothers me, its taking the gamble they don’t have the parts to repair. Yes I’m leaning towards another old faithful zw. 

Well, sometimes you just can't beat PW stuff... 

Mark in Oregon 

I wonder what they are replacing it with? I have one, brand new in the box.

MRC.   lost their excellent tech, Doug.  They seem to have a rather indifferent attitude when I contacted them for repair.  All they  want to do is sell new product.  I like their power packs, can not stand their new attitude.

Take your unit to any good electronics  repair shop.  I had several MRC packs done reasonably.

I sent two in last year. One was fixed at no cost other than shipping which is not cheap. They said the other unit was not repairable and offered me a "deal" on two AC100's which I declined.  I have been using 5 of these for years but problems have been cropping up lately. We also use 8 of them at the museum layouts. I have now gone to a ZW-L as my primary, but still used them for travel layouts.

Steve

I ended up repairing a post on a lionel kw 190 watt transformer i had laying around. Works like a charm and a happy camper. Good old lionel comes to the rescue once again. Now to have fun salvaging the mrc...no more.

First off, the Pure Power Dual is a very simple transformer.  If one side has lost power, it's either the wiper, the diode array, or the circuit breaker has croaked.  Any of the above should be pretty simple to track down and fix.  This is not an electronic transformer, it's a giant toroid transformer with two wipers, a diode board to support whistle/bell functions, and plain circuit breakers for each channel.

I have one of these, is there any way to change the diodes for the whistle and bell so the train doesn't slow down as much when the button is pressed? 

I also use one of these. Twice I have lost power to one side. The problem was the copper strip used as a contactor for the direction button broke. MRC repaired the first one at no charge, and I fixed the other side, albeit not operational as a button now. It powers all the track on my layout, and is a  great transformer.

Trainlover9943 posted:

I have one of these, is there any way to change the diodes for the whistle and bell so the train doesn't slow down as much when the button is pressed? 

None that I can think of, there is alternate wiring where the diodes are always in circuit and you short them out to impart the DC bias on the track.  This just means the transformer has to be delivering a higher voltage to account for the diode drop.  I'm not 100% sure exactly how MRC used the diodes or how they were wired.

gunrunnerjohn posted:

Trainlover9943 posted:

I have one of these, is there any way to change the diodes for the whistle and bell so the train doesn't slow down as much when the button is pressed? 

None that I can think of, there is alternate wiring where the diodes are always in circuit and you short them out to impart the DC bias on the track.  This just means the transformer has to be delivering a higher voltage to account for the diode drop.  I'm not 100% sure exactly how MRC used the diodes or how they were wired.

Ah, could I use a Lionel 5906 sound button or a DPDT momentary switch to do the same thing as the buttons on the transformer? Or would that not make a difference? 

Works the same way.