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Offline ocram63_uk  
#1 Posted : 20 January 2023 19:00:04(UTC)
ocram63_uk

United Kingdom   
Joined: 07/01/2015(UTC)
Posts: 704
Location: England, Suffolk
I got this loco in 2021. It has been in its box for some time before I bought it, I guess, and I 've had it running on my 'flying' layouts on the floor two or three times.
I've put it on the 78150 roller test stand and it runs smoothly forwards. Backwards is another thing, it starts smoothly but suddenly has a 'bump' and the driving gets noisy and moves slowly. I have oiled the axles.
Has any of you that have this loco witnessed a similar behaviour?
The warranty card states the loco was bought in August 2000 in UK from Euro Systems which does not exist anymore. This is of no importance 23 years later :-)

I have been reading at the time that this decoder is crap and that Marklin, in 2000, replaced the current decoder with a better one.
This one still has the dip switches.

So I was planning of using the mLD3 decoder, 60972 as confirmed by Marklin's support, or an ESU LokPilot 5.
Could this driving behaviour be caused by the cheap decoder installed?

Thank you
Offline H0  
#2 Posted : 20 January 2023 19:13:48(UTC)
H0


Joined: 16/02/2004(UTC)
Posts: 15,254
Location: DE-NW
Originally Posted by: ocram63_uk Go to Quoted Post
Could this driving behaviour be caused by the cheap decoder installed?
This is not a cheap decoder, it was state of the art back then. The replacement decoder from 2000 would also have had DIP switches - those were Märklin standard until 2004.

Maybe the original decoder does not have load regulation while the replacement decoder did have load regulation.

Sounds like a mechanical problem. A new decoder will not resolve mechanical problems, but a better decoder may override those problems by giving more power to the motor.
Regards
Tom
---
"In all of the gauges, we particularly emphasize a high level of quality, the best possible fidelity to the prototype, and absolute precision. You will see that in all of our products." (from Märklin New Items Brochure 2015, page 1) ROFLBTCUTS
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Offline ocram63_uk  
#3 Posted : 20 January 2023 19:22:32(UTC)
ocram63_uk

United Kingdom   
Joined: 07/01/2015(UTC)
Posts: 704
Location: England, Suffolk
so I'll open it and see what mechanically is wrong first, then search for a decoder :-)
Thank you
Offline kiwiAlan  
#4 Posted : 20 January 2023 19:28:19(UTC)
kiwiAlan

United Kingdom   
Joined: 23/07/2014(UTC)
Posts: 8,082
Location: ENGLAND, Didcot
This is the very original Br55 model, correct?

IIRC this model always had a less than ideal decoder. Subsequent models did have better ones.

If this has a DC motor then fitting an mld/3 decoder should be straight forward.

Offline ocram63_uk  
#5 Posted : 20 January 2023 22:31:22(UTC)
ocram63_uk

United Kingdom   
Joined: 07/01/2015(UTC)
Posts: 704
Location: England, Suffolk
I think it is the original Br 55 😊 why wouldn't it be?
I'll open it this week end and see what motor it has 👍🏻
I believe it is DC
Offline ocram63_uk  
#6 Posted : 21 January 2023 18:22:51(UTC)
ocram63_uk

United Kingdom   
Joined: 07/01/2015(UTC)
Posts: 704
Location: England, Suffolk
@KiwiAlan, what do you mean with 'This is the very original Br55 model' ? I had the Trix model in the past, converted to Marklin by adding the pick up shoe, and was numbered in the same way 55 5555, I think.

Today I opened the loco. The motor is inside the boiler, strange location for a Marklin motor. The motor runs perfectly without being attached to the loco.
All the brass cogwheels were dry so I put some grease on all of them. It still works better moving forwards than backwards, improved, even after lubricating.
I'll have to order a modern decoder. It seems this one is a bit reluctant to provide power at the rotation of the throttle.

Taking it apart is simple, if you know how. Now I know :-)

It is better to remove all the tubes, pipes and the lot as well as the gangplanks aroud the boiler before you start doing anything.
IMPORTANT!!!! Place pieces in bags labelled correctly so you can then reassemble the whole lot.

I have also extracted the PCB under the boiler to see how the smoke unit is powered. As it is, with this decoder, it is always powered.
I used a multimeter to check the voltage passed to the smoke unit and it and it increases turning the throttle. No good.
There are various copper tracks on the PCB that seem you can use to do other things but it is difficult to understand.
I'll have to check which is the one that carries / can carry the AUX output of the new decoder. I'll provide screenshots when I actually get down to do the conversion.

To be continued :-)
Offline kiwiAlan  
#7 Posted : 21 January 2023 20:46:22(UTC)
kiwiAlan

United Kingdom   
Joined: 23/07/2014(UTC)
Posts: 8,082
Location: ENGLAND, Didcot
Originally Posted by: ocram63_uk Go to Quoted Post
@KiwiAlan, what do you mean with 'This is the very original Br55 model' ? I had the Trix model in the past, converted to Marklin by adding the pick up shoe, and was numbered in the same way 55 5555, I think.


That is the model I am thinking of, it was the very first of a series of models with the catalogue numbers 3755x, and when it came out everyone seemed to complain about the lousy decoder performance with that motor. Later models had a decoder better suited to the motor. I don't know what the difference was, it may have just been programming of the decoder, or the decoder hardware may have been different.

I suspect the Trix model was issued without a decoder, so whatever else happened in the conversion i suspect a decoder was part of it, probably an ESU one.
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