NEED HELP WITH MTH FP45 PROTOSOUND-1 PROBLEM AFTER FACTORY RESET

@Chas posted:

I installed a BCR and let it charge for 5 minutes and did a factory reset.  I did notice that this engine may have been originally a Protosound-2 engine because in came in a box which lists the product number as 30-2460-1 with all the PS-2.0 functions listed.

https://mthtrains.com/30-2460-1

The engine will not move in either direction and the bell and horn will not work.   Also the volume potentiometer is laying loose in what appears to the the PS 2.0 fuel tank which has no mounting hole and only can be adjusted by opening up the locomotive to turn the pot which may be causing a short (see bottom last picture).

Can anyone please reply with what might be wrong or what I might be doing wrong?

Chas , just my 2 cents .......the box you say you received this engine in sounds like it matches the manual for the MTH 30-2460 .     When I looked up the " support " in  the manual for this engine , I see it is a 3 VOLT /ps2 ...........however your photo shows the designation QSI labeled on the boards which I  generally avoid because I  believe  it shows that it would be a 5 VOLT / ps2 .   There seems ,many times , to be issues with the 5 VOLT boards going bad.

There are fixes by some of the techs  (  GRJ , GGG, ALAN , etc ) on the forum if there is a  board problem. 🤔

I hope it is just something simple.  Good luck.

You did a reset 18?  Did you press and hold the bell button after the 3 clinks and 3 clanks until you got a garbled bell, then press the bell button again, before pressing the Program button?

Does your transformer serial number start with 0398?  If so, you have a significant voltage leakage problem (typical on this model).

The variable voltage regulator has probably failed.  That distortion in sound is from high DC voltage on that reg, vice 10ish VDC.  Regardless it should run but with voltage under 10VDC after start up.

Instead of the BCR do your testing and reset with a good/new 9V alkaline.  But I think the bottom board needs to be repaired replaced.  G

What you did as feature reset 18 which works but you didnt get the clinks and clanks after the feature reset, which is failing to make it reset. You may need a force reset chip from mth (item 50-1023) and it might have to reset that way.