Some time ago I bought a wonderful V200 150 loco from eBay... for my son, of course! :)

Most of the Märklin models we have are from eBay and I know the risk of mainly used stuff. So far we had been lucky. Until now.

The 39821 model is boxed and in visibly perfect condition. It has obviously been used looking at the shoe and wheels, but for the first few months it ran perfectly (we only get these out on rare weekends to keep it special). It's a very heavy metal model, but was smooth and I even felt the need to reduce its max speed at the start.

But then one day it instantly developed a strange issue. Whereas the sound and lights still function correctly (including direction changing), the loco would not move unless gently nudged. Then it would run at one (mid) speed. We couldn't slow it down or speed it up after the nudge unless the speed was set to zero, which which point it would stop abruptly, only moving once more when nudged again (with any speed set on the controller above zero).

I have dismanted the loco and found the same behaviour with the motor completely out. If I set the controller to anything above zero speed (regardless of direction), the motor would need the tiniest of touches to start it spinning.

In had a look at the parts booklet that came with the loco, but the motor and decoder only appear to be available as one. I didn't try it, but the flexi flat wiring appears to be detachable from the controller board by way of the connector.

Unfortunately part #9 ("Motor mit Decoder", 21 4576) appears to no longer be available. Or any quoted reference is getting on for 2x what I bought it for which is rediculous.

My options appear to be:

1) find a donor loco cheap
2) find a compatible replacement motor or decoder
3) sell as-is for for spares (all mechanicals, lights, sound and box are perfect)
4) just display it on a shelf - thankfully it's good looking :)

Any help or thoughts appreciated to this forum first timer. Thanks!

Thanks Tom for the suggestion. I did examine this carefully but it's impossible to tell visually. Main trouble with this is that it appears to be bonded on the motor end so checking each channel would be very hard. There doesn't appear to be any way to dismantle to motor either.

But definitely a possibility...

What kind of motor is inside the loco?I check the booklet on www.maerklin.de but i cannot undestand what kind of motor is.

Hi,

How does it run on analog layout? You should test if it runs controllable in analog mode or not. I agree it is a nice looking model and in my opinion you should fix it. The problem sounds like a decoder or wiring problem. Motor just gets a relatively high voltage and runs then mid speed or does not get voltage and does not run at all until it suddenly "sprints" to speed. Motor itself should be ok. If it was a newer type decoder a reset to factory settings would be worth trying, but this is not possible with this decoder.

Anyway things could maybe change when you put it on analog tracks and test it as decoder should change to analog mode. After this put it on digital tracks and test if anything has changed or not. I would do this kind of test myself, but just remember that you should not use other than white/grey newer type analog transformer if you are going to do direction changes, as the voltage spike could otherwise damage the decoder. If you only test to run it in one direction you can use also older analog transformers.

PS. One more thing to test. Try to turn those max. speed and acceleration/braking delay pots in off position and on position if this makes any difference.

Regards,
Janne

C Sine motor is brushless and mainentance-free and should last a very long time.
Weak spot seams to be the flat flex connector. Another weak spot is unavailability of spare parts.

My thoughts are, try oiling the motor bearing on the one side you can access this and also the gear train in the motor bogie. It's possible that some old lubricant has seized, meaning the loco requires a high voltage to get moving.

Whereabouts are you, I am in Bournemouth, I would be happy to give you a hand swapping parts out to try and locate the problem?

I don't have this exact loco, but I do have a few other rotary C Sines so we could swap out the decoder board and motor bogie fairly easily.

Let me know if I can help.

Ashley

Edited by user 11 June 2014 01:22:20(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified