Dave or Stan wondering if you guys could help out I have a 3 truck shay from Bachmann that has been giving us fits we have it hooked up to Cordless batteries and REvolution and it preformed fine in the beginning but now it will run 10 feet and stop then the headlight starts blinking when we shut the controller of then on again the link is back the engine will move and its fine for ten minutes then stops again and the headlight starts blinking again. Any ideas would be welcome at this time
Matt
Matt - A few thoughts -
what voltage is the battery pack?
have you tried the receiver in another engine?
is there a message on the transmitter’s screen when it gets goofy?
dave
Could be an overheating issue.
Ralph
I agree with Ralph. That sounds like thermal shutdown of the Revo. The Revo is rated for 5 amps continuous. Id be curious what the three trucker draws.
Hi Matt… Good talking with you… Hope the situation gets rectified… I sure think is an overheating issue… The small area inside the 3 truck tender could use some ventilation…
I’ve had similar problems that were solved by venting the hot air out with vent holes and or small fans blowing over the receivers…
Heat is an issue…
I appreciate the info guys I am having the gentleman pull the tender cover to allow the heat to disipate and test it. Dave the voltage is an 18.6 5400 milliamp battery from Cordless the reciever was tested in another engine and no message is appearing on the trransmitter I will keep all appraised of the results of the test
Matt
Ok so after all this it turns out its the batteries the pcbs on them are bad and by the way dave i was wrong they were aristo 21.5s bought about 3 to 4 years ago. anyway when we had the customer measure th voltage it was 26 volts out of one of the batteries and 14.4 out of the other weird. also he has the old charger without the auto cutoff. anyway it seems that the unit was shutting off when it reached the revos capacity to handle. Just goes to show we had to check everything
All the Aristo-Craft lithium-ion batteries I have would not charge past 25.5 volts. I have since found out that 6-cell packs should not be charged to more than 25.2 volts. An A-C lithium-ion battery reading 26 volts is unusual.
Leaving them on the charger once they reach their peak voltage is hard on lithium-ion batteries. I use the old A-C charger, as there were none of the new ones available at the spring ECLSTS. I have a connector set up on my multimeter and measure the voltage every hour or less. Once a battery reaches its peak voltage, I remove the charger.
Not all lithium-ion batteries will reach the 25.2 peak, but I keep a record (Excel spreadsheet) of all my batteries. It includes the date charged, voltage on, time on, voltage off, time off, and peak voltage.
It has been my experience that an A-C lithium-ion battery reading in around 14.6 volts will often not charge. You friend should test his. I don’t know the science, but I assume two cells are out of whack.
Oddly enough I have had two A-C lithium-ion batteries in my shop over the last year that read in the 6 volt range. Fortunately both of them recharged.
Matt Drennan said:
Dave or Stan wondering if you guys could help out I have a 3 truck shay from Bachmann that has been giving us fits we have it hooked up to Cordless batteries and REvolution and it preformed fine in the beginning but now it will run 10 feet and stop then the headlight starts blinking when we shut the controller of then on again the link is back the engine will move and its fine for ten minutes then stops again and the headlight starts blinking again. Any ideas would be welcome at this time
Matt
Matt
I assume you have a 3 truck shay that does not have the Soundtraxx DCC decoder installed. Soundtraxx uses blinking headlights to indicate over voltage or overload.
If your three truck does not have a decoder and is a pure revolution locomotive check with Navin at Aristocraft as to what the blinking light actually means. It overload then you might be forced to remove the motor from the 3rd truck. Reducing the battery voltage might also help.
Hope that helps
Stan
Matt Drennan said:
Ok so after all this it turns out its the batteries the pcbs on them are bad and by the way dave i was wrong they were aristo 21.5s bought about 3 to 4 years ago. anyway when we had the customer measure th voltage it was 26 volts out of one of the batteries and 14.4 out of the other weird. also he has the old charger without the auto cutoff. anyway it seems that the unit was shutting off when it reached the revos capacity to handle. Just goes to show we had to check everything
Boy, talk about being redfaced, Matt… I’ve that very same thing happen with batteries… The PCB just shuts down… Resets, runs… Shuts down, resets runs… Shuts down…
Sorry I didn’t recall that when we chatted…