(ignore the 2 copper stripes that are next to each other, it shifted to one side when i was holding this to take photos. That i know would cause shorts or bad connections for running) Can anyone help diagnose my non running p42. I bought this many years ago so none of the mods were original and none of it was what i did. Im not digging the booger soldering. The lights come on when i press down on the back of the decoder (assuming this is a decoder with all the stuff on the board) but it does not run at all. I did break the solder on top as i was fiddling but even when it wasnt broken it was not running. Right out of the box nothing come on, not even lights. Ill likely go resolder in a bit just to make sure. Does anyone have any tips or things i should be looking at to isolate what problem it may be? Im guessing the decoder itself is hearty enough not to break? but who knows. Im just not sure where to start.
i have a digitrax zephyr dcs50. Ill go try a reset later and report back. I gotta clean off the junky soldering job that previous owner did and solder that joint back in first
While apart, test to make sure the motor is ok. Without the decoder attached, use a 9V battery across the two end caps of the motor. Yes, that is a Digitrax decoder
Where are the motor brush leads- why is there solder on the brush caps? The two motor leads should stick up through the gray plastic . The two truck strips that run for and aft need Kapton tape to insulate the power pick ups from the motor strips that stick up.
I just enlarged the center photo to see the decoder, and WOW. I only see two solder joints, toward the left hand end, and boy are they ugly. I mean I could solder better when I was ten. But relax, remove you finger from the delete key, as I think I know what happened. It looks like the doints were soldered using a too small iron. This is more common than you might thing, Guys think, I don't wan t to burn up my whatever, so I'll sue a low wattage rion. That's a bad idea. You need to use a higher wattage iron so you can get on and off the joint in a flash. More damage has been done by having to hold a soldering iron tip on a joint for a long long time. And the damage on and around the brush caps looks to me like 100% too small iron held on the joint too long damage. I've soldered wires directly on brush caps without removing the caps from the motor without any damage on at least a hundred installations.. I put a spot of paste flux on the cap, tinned the wire, and get a drop of solder on the tip of the iron, and just touched the bit of solder to the wire, which is drawn to the wire and cap thanks to the flux. Bang. on and off in barely a second.
brush leads are on the chassis right? not in this pic. motor leads have the leads that stick up through the plastic. Truck strips have kapton tape insulating.
Was it damaged? Damn straight. But it all looks like a good tech could rewire things, no repair needed, and all would be well.
yea which is why i had to press down on the back of the decoder to get at least the lights to come on.
just wondering what it means for me. I know nothing about how to repair silicon. I was thinking of just cleaning off the old solder and resoldering the right way. ill be doing the 9v motor test as a start jsut to make sure the engine is at least good, then i can worry about the board, or even get a new one since i want one that has sound anyways...
yes you need to un solder the board . remove it. put the pick up back in place. make sure kapton tape is in place on the truck pick ups meet the motor pick ups. put the decoder back on and down and clipped on to the plastic clip that little hole in the board is there for then re solder.
good news, motor spins with a 9v battery. going to try to clean up the original solder and resolder...
Umm, I hope you didn’t do the battery test before desoldering the motor leads from the board. If you did, you just fried the decoder.
nope, removed the decoder first before i did that. Looks like everything works now. Looks like it just needed that booger solder cleaned up and resoldered and a reprogram on the track. THanks everyone!
