Proto 3 Engine stops & Jerks

good luck,,maybe GGG will have an idea about your problem, I'm not very familiar with the mth PS's 3 ,only the ps2 3 volt and 5 volt boards. your's are different.

Check with GGG on this forum. you might try a conventional reset from neutral with engine power on?i believe the reset is one bell and five whistle and you should get 2 toot's if done correctly!

Alan

Make sure tether is seated correctly, sometimes if they're not seated properly it'll cause issues similar to what you are describing.

Here is the link to the topic I opened.  See if there is any help for you there.

Here is my YouTube, that shows what mine was doing very well.  It starts acting up at about 3:55 into the video.  It didn't matter if it was smoking or not.

So it starts and stops, but when you hit the direction button it has to restart?  Meaning it shutdown with out sounds?

Smoke on and it doesn't run?

Bad Smoke fans can cause issues, but it smoke is off and it still acts up you have other things going wrong.

I always check linkage for bends, traction tires, binding when turning flywheel.  If that is all good, your into electrics.  Bad Tach, tach gap, tether, or some other significant board issue.  G

Mark Boyce. If your looking for advice or an answer on that locomotive!

You have come to the right place (OGR) Forum There are a lot of good techs here,

If they would get on this. Wish you luck.   Mike.

Thanks Mike!  I shipped mine back to MTH last week for warranty repair.  It's Bruce's we are trying to fix now.  :-)

Mark Boyce.

Best thing you could have done!

          Mike.

Thanks Mike!

Once I realized I wasn't doing anything wrong, I called them up.  It was that way right out of the box brand spanking new.  A first for me.

Thank you Mark.

          Mike.

MTH will make it right

          Mike.

Bruce, when that engine first came out I was at MTH school working in the shop and had one of those handed to me.  It did the same thing.  I worked on it all day and had no luck.  I replaced both boiler and tender boards.  The end result it was learned that the harnesses had two wires reversed.  This was done at the factory.   Do not fool with it and send it back to MTH.  Jeff is familiar with the issue and will fix it for you.

Marty, how did it get figured out that the harness was the problem?  One usually takes that for granted.

When I left MTH, they worked on it for days.  Tech Mike Hey matched it against a known good one and he found it.  That is the only engine I have ever heard of the situation.  PS2 is no problem as we know every wire. 

So this is PS3 with the 40-pin plug?  With that many pins, isn't there duplication of colors?

The connection with the dreaded 40 pins is on the diesel board. Steam locomotives have a boiler board that deals with motor, lighting, and smoke.   The tender board is your main board.  The Hiawatha has the two board system.  These are dealt with a lot different today.  The tech guys (many of us) have what is known as Golden Boards.  That is a special boiler board and special tender board.  When we put the boards in our test fixture the suspect board is replaced with a Golden board.  If everything works then, repair is now figured out.  The same goes for the boiler Golden board.  The PS3 test fixture is very complex as it also works with all MTH HO boards, and drawbars.

The 40 pin diesel connector is not fun to work with.  I had a guy bring me one where he yanked the bundle of wires on the 40 pin and pulled many out of the socket.  I did not tell him "GO PATS".

Marty I sent the engine back when I first received it and it has been fin up to this show.  The problem looks like it comes on with increased power use by the engine.  Thanks Bruce

Bruce, can you answer my question?  I would start by changing the smoke fan motor.  G

GGG

1 direction button is just fast way of stopping engine.  I hit the direction button again and start up the engine - sound still going.

2 smoke on only lowers speed that the problem starts - 80 mph smoke off - about 15-20 mph smoke on

3 runs well until it stops and jerks.  I can not see any mechanical problem.

Thanks Bruce

I imagine it needs to be tested by swapping various parts to try and isolate what is causing this.  Maybe the boiler board is over loading and cutting out.  Probably where I would start as long as you know you have good conductivity through the draw bar and connections.  G

Hi Mark did you ever get your engine back fro mth repair.?

Alan

Alan,

Its funny; I just checked my status this afternoon, and you are the second person to ask since that.  They received and signed it into their system on June 1st.  It is still waiting in queue.  Thanks for asking.

I just received 2 Lionel Pocahontas cars I bought after that.  They look great, so I will be happy when the J arrives.  :-)

I thought since it has been one month to the day since I opened my ticket with MTH, I would check the status again.  Here is the result:

I am hoping to have it back by Saturday, July 11th so I can take it and my Pocahontas cars to the North Penn O Gauge open house as Harry Henning advertised on another topic.

I'm guessing you may be disappointed, doesn't look like it's going to make the cutoff date.  Maybe we can provide a "fill-in" locomotive for the task.

Yes John, I don't know how long things take there.  It doesn't matter, I was just wanting to see how my 21" Pocahontas cars look on larger curves than my 048.  Having a small layout, I am used to things looking a bit odd on the curves.  Fortunately running all steam era trains, and small to mid size engines, these are the first cars that long, but don't look bad to my accustomed eye.  We will see how it goes.

Thank you.

21" cars on 48" curves?  That must looks a teeny bit odd!   They look somewhat out of place on the 72" curves.

I had a K-Line 21" set, but I sold that and I stick to the 18" cars.  They work well on 72" curves, and don't hang out so much.

We're mapping out mods to the layout so the Big Boy can run, there are a few places where it just can't make it around.