VISION Big Boy Help!

Have you tried resetting it to the factory settings?

Berkshire President posted:

Have you tried resetting it to the factory settings?

Yes I've tried to do that. But since it will not respond to any command signal I am unable to reprogram it

ZHUBL  

The blinking headlight is a sign of bad antenna signal reception.

Try holding hand over both handrails if it works when in freak mode to all commands you have either a possible handrail grounded to boiler, or a wire has come loose inside the cab where it connects to end of handrail.

Another possibility is either the RCMC board and or the antenna board has failed.

Now when it freaks out will some commands work while others do not?

Try this test for me hold aux2 key for 3 seconds now try turning tender rear red lights on/off if like whistle it's acting same as mine did January of 2016.

Let me know results to above test suggestion's

What is that second to last sentence..."if like whistle" mean?

cjack posted:

What is that second to last sentence..."if like whistle" mean?

I should have clarified that!

In video it shows the whistle not always responding to the command sent from cab-2 .

so if the tender lights or any command responds same way as the whistle command then symptoms are same and not just for the whistle command.

Hopefully I answered your question

Yes, now I get it. Thanks.

I am making a geuss but probably not correct, the track may have been dirty. Try cleaning the wheels and oiling the necessary parts. Also won't I would highly recommend is contacting Lionel and ask them, they are a great help

StPaul posted:

ZHUBL  

The blinking headlight is a sign of bad antenna signal reception.

Try holding hand over both handrails if it works when in freak mode to all commands you have either a possible handrail grounded to boiler, or a wire has come loose inside the cab where it connects to end of handrail.

Another possibility is either the RCMC board and or the antenna board has failed.

Now when it freaks out will some commands work while others do not?

Try this test for me hold aux2 key for 3 seconds now try turning tender rear red lights on/off if like whistle it's acting same as mine did January of 2016.

Let me know results to above test suggestion's

I have had some ground issues before on an older engine. I don't think it is that but I'll double check tomorrow when I can and will let you know. I also feared a board might be fried…

thanks for the thoughts 

Alex Trains posted:

I am making a geuss but probably not correct, the track may have been dirty. Try cleaning the wheels and oiling the necessary parts. Also won't I would highly recommend is contacting Lionel and ask them, they are a great help

Not sure if the wheels are that dirty, they were pretty shiny last I checked, but I'll definitely double check. I was going to talk with Lionel but was too late by the time I got to it. 

Thanks for the suggestion 

I hope you didn't get smoke fluid on the main board .It right under the blowdown smoke unit filler  .. it will do some weird stuff if that board has smoke fluid on it. Very unresponsive..

I don't think so I usually try to be very careful when adding fluid. But who knows… 

There's a receiver board that slips into the RCMC driver board. It seems to me that this receiver board might have loosened up. You would have to take the shell off to see if it did. To take the shell of this engine there's two mounting screw's in the front and two in the back, once removed the top of the boiler will lift up. BUT you must be very careful there's many wires attached to the boiler, so don't lift it to high. If this board it loose, simply push it back down to reset it in place.

Alex

          SAMPLE PHOTO OF RECEIVER BOARD AND RCMC DRIVER BOARD

Thank y'all for all of your ideas I think I have narrowed it down to that radio receiver board being losses or something shorts out after warming up. I tried it today, at first everything went just fine I shut off power to reprogram the locomotive to factory settings. when I reapplied power it did as shown in the videos. After sitting for a few hours it seamed to be just fine, did a few power cycles and still ran just fine but after about 10 min. I did another power cycle and again back to the original issue. With any luck something is just loose, worse case it'll have a long cold trip from Kansas to NC for Lionel to take a look at it.

Thanks Again!

I can say the headlight sure doesn't look like bad signal, it looks like it thinks it's a MARS light.  That's a very deliberate blinking, it's programmed.  I'd second Alex's suggestion about the loose board.

In case anyone wanted to know the official problem was the RCMC. According to the service note the RCMC was shorting out and they replaced the board and did a normal 4 hour test run with no problems.

I feel your pain; I have a Big Boy that I bought in 2015 with no issues except meager blow down.  It is good to know that the main board is below the blow down fill as mentioned by JOJO (good to know so as not to overfill that).

Have you now run the Big Boy and tested it yourself on your layout?

I use a ZWL to power my layout which is supposed to have adequate circuit breaker protection for the Legacys.

Are there any thoughts from the forum on the possible power surge?? from the incident in your original post? 

RickM46 posted:

I feel your pain; I have a Big Boy that I bought in 2015 with no issues except meager blow down.  It is good to know that the main board is below the blow down fill as mentioned by JOJO (good to know so as not to overfill that).

Have you now run the Big Boy and tested it yourself on your layout?

I use a ZWL to power my layout which is supposed to have adequate circuit breaker protection for the Legacys.

Are there any thoughts from the forum on the possible power surge?? from the incident in your original post? 

Unfortunately I don't have my own full layout running yet just that small test track shown in the videos above. Between life I haven't had a chance to fully test the locomotive but a quick test last night showed it was working good.

I'm personally thinking the reason for the short has something to do with MTH. The layout I was running it on when the incident occurred is almost always MTH engines. So it's powered by a Z4000 and a TIU along with legacy. I'm thinking seeing as there was no direct short on the track but power was abruptly shut off either the Z4000 with a normal sine wave compared to all other transformers with a modified one had some sort of surge. Or a DCS signal piggybacking on the power screwed with something. But there's no exact way of knowing. 

On another note, from what I hear the ZW-L is a very good transformer and is what I plan to use for a power source when I get my layout going. 

zhubl posted:

 

I'm personally thinking the reason for the short has something to do with MTH.

Highly unlikely.........IMHO.

Hey Zach, too bad that 4014 is acting up, I was wondering if it would be able to squeeze through the O-63's on my new layout.  Hopefully it will be working well by the time you get up here to see the layout.

ATSF Doug posted:

Hey Zach, too bad that 4014 is acting up, I was wondering if it would be able to squeeze through the O-63's on my new layout.  Hopefully it will be working well by the time you get up here to see the layout.

The locomotive will take O54 believe it or not.  But the tender is very unhappy to take anything below O72 (I have a friend that has run his on O63, slowly.).  So just like the prototype, the tender is the real limiting factor when it comes to track radius.

Ok new issue, I finally had time to throw the engine on the track and test it. everything seamed to be fine bu as soon as I hit Speed step 23 on the legacy remote the engine slows and acts funny. Almost as if instead of the two engines operating separately it sounds like their running at exactly the same pace. I have tried to reprogram it with no luck, I am thinking it is the RCMC again but they just replaced that! I will try to have a video up soon (May have to be in bits due to the upload file size limit)

Here are the Videos

Just wanted to jump in right here and say this..Be careful  running your equipment on "other" layouts.I fried one of my Atlas MP15 Locomotives once.Be sure there is adequate protection,power and proper wiring.You know what I mean.Nick

ZHUBL, in last video your BB is working fine as speed picks up the chuff sounds combine as one this is normal.

my BB works same as yours, as a heads up if you have the small funnel that Lionel includes with some of later steam engines use it to add smoke fluid into blow down fill hole it will eliminate the fluid possibly getting onto the rcmc board below.

also make video longer and then upload it to you tube and then embed the video into your post can be longer video that way.

zhubl posted:

Ok new issue, I finally had time to throw the engine on the track and test it. everything seamed to be fine bu as soon as I hit Speed step 23 on the legacy remote the engine slows and acts funny. Almost as if instead of the two engines operating separately it sounds like their running at exactly the same pace. I have tried to reprogram it with no luck, I am thinking it is the RCMC again but they just replaced that! I will try to have a video up soon (May have to be in bits due to the upload file size limit)

I had a similar problem with my brand new VL Big Boy Christmas 2014. I described the problem to Lionel as follows - "As soon as the work lights go off, at around speed setting 21, the engine decreases in actual speed but the engine sound speeds up. This continues through speed 36 or so, and then the engine accelerates and its motion catches up with the sound."

I called Lionel, and their service rep had me conduct some tests, but in the end determined that I had to send the Big Boy to them for service. I did, and received it back in four weeks. I have run it on a regular basis since then, and have had no further issues with it.

Alex

Ingeniero No1 posted:

zhubl posted:

Ok new issue, I finally had time to throw the engine on the track and test it. everything seamed to be fine bu as soon as I hit Speed step 23 on the legacy remote the engine slows and acts funny. Almost as if instead of the two engines operating separately it sounds like their running at exactly the same pace. I have tried to reprogram it with no luck, I am thinking it is the RCMC again but they just replaced that! I will try to have a video up soon (May have to be in bits due to the upload file size limit)

I had a similar problem with my brand new VL Big Boy Christmas 2014. I described the problem to Lionel as follows - "As soon as the work lights go off, at around speed setting 21, the engine decreases in actual speed but the engine sound speeds up. This continues through speed 36 or so, and then the engine accelerates and its motion catches up with the sound."

I called Lionel, and their service rep had me conduct some tests, but in the end determined that I had to send the Big Boy to them for service. I did, and received it back in four weeks. I have run it on a regular basis since then, and have had no further issues with it.

Alex

Alex,

That is Exactly what it is doing! It sucks to hear that it had to go back to lionel, especially since I JUST had it there for another reason. By chance to you remember what they replaced?

Zachariah 

Zachariah,

Unfortunately, no; I do not remember what/if they told me they had replaced. I just looked at their emails pertaining to this issue, and they did keep me abreast of their progress and shipping, but a reason for the problem was not included in their emails. If I find the packing list, I'll let you know.

Good luck!

Alex

Alex and Zachariah,  did you ever find out what the fix was for this condition on your Big Boy:

"As soon as the work lights go off, at around speed setting 21, the engine decreases in actual speed but the engine sound speeds up. This continues through speed 36 or so, and then the engine accelerates and its motion catches up with the sound."

RickM46 posted:

Alex and Zachariah,  did you ever find out what the fix was for this condition on your Big Boy:

"As soon as the work lights go off, at around speed setting 21, the engine decreases in actual speed but the engine sound speeds up. This continues through speed 36 or so, and then the engine accelerates and its motion catches up with the sound."

I remember the Lionel service tech left a note on what he had to do. I’ll see if I can find it but it must me some fluke with certain boards. Litterly I think they just added a capacitor in it. Like I said I’ll see if I can find the note 

Zachariah, thanks, I would like to know what the tech did; I just had my RCMC board replaced (I drowned it with too much smoke fluid) and the locomotive is doing the same thing.

Ok found the original Invocies from Lionel there is the first one for the RCMC shorting out (I still have no idea how in the world that happened). The second is their fix for the speed step issue it is kinda vague, you may see if a Authrized Lionel service Tech knows anything about this “fix”

Yes, it is adding a cap to the motor.  Mine had the same issue and after some back and forth that was determined what the fix is.  It's item #1 in this photo, p/n 691CAP4750.  Here it is installed.

After they sent it to me, I got it installed and now it runs nice and smooth.

Wow, great help from the forum.  Thanks to Sinclair and Zachariah!!  Looks like there are 2 possible solutions:

Sinclair had a cap - part 691CAP4750 - installed on the motor.  Looks like the small black rectangle on the top of his motor picture.  See part diagram https://www.lionelsupport.com/...ca-b305-36d7636e967e

Zachariah had the following done as documented in his service receipt by the tech: 'Install capacitor (no part number) on encoder board which solved the speed step issues along with replacing broken valve gear assembly.  Plus replaced defective motor driver board on tender.'  Parts were: 691MDR1C01 - Motor Driver/Light Controller/Tender Coal Load and 6101434157 - Valve Gear Assembly/LH/Front/Vision Big Boy.

Sinclair, did you do the install of the cap?  Did it have to be soldered in place?

Alex, did you ever find the service receipt?

I appreciate the effort from you two in helping me out.  Now, I have to figure out next steps.

The story with my VLBB is I finally got the 1st stage of my layout done, a loop of O72 track so I could run this loco.  So I put it on the track and got lights and sounds and nothing else.  After contacting Lionel I was told they aren't taking out of warranty repairs (This was early Q4 of last year.), but a Lionel Service Center should be able to help me.  I emailed back that I didn't have any near me, and that I wasn't afraid to the the work myself.  So one of their guys took the time over the next few days to email back and forth with me to troubleshoot and decided the problem was the RCMC.  I sent them that board and they tested it.  It was bad so I bought a replacement.  Once installed the locomotive ran again, but did that funny thing with the speed .  More emails and they sent me the cap.  I then soldered it on and now it runs nice and smooth again.  I was really happy with their help taking the time to let me fix it over email.  But then I am a mechanical engineer and don't fear digging into things.

Sinclair, thanks a bunch for the quick reply.  I am no stranger to hand tools and solder.  I just had my RCMC board replaced by one of the best Lionel techs for a Big Boy.  I don't know if the cap is already on my motor.  I will drop him a line and see if he remembers seeing the cap there.  I saw where the cap is cheap - $3.50 - and wouldn't mind putting on one myself.  Do you remember how many leads come out of the cap and where to solder them??   Thanks a bunch.

It's a 4.7uf 50V bi-polar capacitor, a cheap place to get it is Digikey as Lionel will have expensive shipping.

Nichicon CAP ALUM 4.7UF 20% 50V RADIAL, 28 cents each.  Shipping for small orders from Digikey is only around $3, and the ship very fast, usually in a couple of days you'll have your parts.  You can have a few for around $5 total.

I’m curious, why a bi-polar capacitor and what role does it play?

thanks!

Gunrunner - thanks a bunch!!!  Any help is appreciated.

Brush arc EMI noise suppression, and it's bipolar because the motor changes polarity to run in reverse.