MTH 260 part number help needed

your smoke unit may have had the heat resister short to the reservoir tank that will cause a direct short it may even take out the ps2 board!

do you have then item number of the engine  ? also how many pin is the harness connector is it a 10 pin? did the diodes on the connector board short or open and what part of the board is burnt ? also can you take a good picture of the pc board close up shor both sides ill try to help you figure it out! then put the picture. on the forum again ill help you figure it out , did the diode burn up? the traces can be repaired even if you don't know how a tech here can repair it. a new harness if you can get one is around $15.00 plus shipping from mth !

I would check with a vom meter on your smoke resisters to ground and see if you have a short if so that's what caused the burnt diode and pc board issue. one end of smoke resister to reservoir you should not read any resistance should read infinity! if you read any ohms at all there is a short!!!!

Contact MTH directly. They will be able to look up the part number and supply you with a replacement part.

Larry

Alan Mancus posted:

your smoke unit may have had the heat resister short to the reservoir tank that will cause a direct short it may even take out the ps2 board!

do you have then item number of the engine  ? also how many pin is the harness connector is it a 10 pin? did the diodes on the connector board short or open and what part of the board is burnt ? also can you take a good picture of the pc board close up shor both sides ill try to help you figure it out! then put the picture. on the forum again ill help you figure it out , did the diode burn up? the traces can be repaired even if you don't know how a tech here can repair it. a new harness if you can get one is around $15.00 plus shipping from mth !

I would check with a vom meter on your smoke resisters to ground and see if you have a short if so that's what caused the burnt diode and pc board issue. one end of smoke resister to reservoir you should not read any resistance should read infinity! if you read any ohms at all there is a short!!!!

Hello Alan,

Product number is 10-3030-1but I don't think the ps2 board is damaged. The smoke unit and light still work when the train is in reverse. That's telling me it's not completely dead and I've had similar issues with the diode on another 260 over the years. It's a 10 pin harness and I check with my multimeter, nothing is shorted out on the smoke unit. One of the two diodes is shorted. As far what's burnt, I tried to capture some pictures of the harness. The burnt section is the area right above the diodes (I removed them to test them). The broken trace is the right side of the 10 pin connector board where the diodes connect to the purple wires. And the brown wire to the smoke unit overheated and burned up the insulation.

I'm thinking my smoke unit got too hot because the wick is getting old. I found some burnt areas of the wick. Also I need to reduce my smoke volume, I'm generating way too much.

I'll try to get some pictures of the PS2 board today.

Thank you,

Sam 

The way it works the diodes are fed from the motor yellow n white wires you say it works in one direction that is because one diode is good when the time engine is reversed the other diode feeds the smoke unit you need replace the bad diode and fixed the burnt track and wires and it will work again! If you have another harness or another good engine just compare the 2 and you should be able to figure it out.the polarity changes when forward or reverse that's why you need two diodes to supply voltage no matter what direction it's running otherwise it would only smoke in one directions!

Alan Mancus posted:

The way it works the diodes are fed from the motor yellow n white wires you say it works in one direction that is because one diode is good when the time engine is reversed the other diode feeds the smoke unit you need replace the bad diode and fixed the burnt track and wires and it will work again! If you have another harness or another good engine just compare the 2 and you should be able to figure it out.the polarity changes when forward or reverse that's why you need two diodes to supply voltage no matter what direction it's running otherwise it would only smoke in one directions!

Agreed, and I tried to fix the board today. It's not pretty but I have a fully functioning locomotive again. I installed two 3A diodes instead of the 1A original diodes. Their form factor is a little bigger so they don't fit perfectly, However at this point it doesn't matter too much as the board was actually cracked so I had to fix a few things on it. All in all for $3 worth of parts and an hours time, I'm back up and running. I may just pick up a spare harness if I see one at Allentown this weekend, if not, I'll order one just to have handy.

Thanks!

gland I can help and glad you got it running! by the way mth sells just the pc board if I remember correctly and you could transfer your wiring to a new board, I purchase one at York a while back for one of my engines.

Alan