5 axle diesel problem

[Limey]

 A friend has asked me to have a look at this 5 axle diesel that I think is made by Kato although there is nothing on the loco to indicate manufacturer.
  The problem is that someone else has installed a decoder in this unit but the unit does not run. The headlight can be turned on and off, and on the program track I can read back the four digit allocated number.
   The decoder is a Digitrax  DH163 wired to an 8 pin plug. This 8 pin plug goes into a small PC board.

      What I can't understand is the orange wire goes from the 8 pin PC board to the motor via a conglomeration of electrical parts that are contained in a piece of yellow shrink tubing.  Looking into one end of the shrink tubing ( which is about twice the size of the decoder,) there seems to be a bunch of diodes and resistors on a PC board.  There are no other wires in or out of this shrink tube effort.
    Does anyone have any  experience with anything of this sort, it's certainly new to me.

Thanks, Limey.

[Limey]

Further to my original post, I replaced the decoder with the dummy plugs and the loco runs but very slowly, on full power it is barely creeping along, also, the packet in the yellow shrink tube gets quite warm after only about 2 minutes to test it.

Limey.

[Limey]

For those of you that might be interested on this topic, I removed the yellow shrink tubed gizmo and wired the motor direct to the plug. installed a new decoder and everything works great.

     The GIZMO turned out to be 21 diodes wired in series with a piece of insulation between them.  Why anyone would put that number of diodes together for any reason beats me.

     BTW. my friend told me that this installation was done by the LHS where he bought the locos.

   Regards, Limey.

[GG1onFordsDTandI]

They may have done that to keep the loco at a crawl? But a call to find out exactly why wouldn't be a bad idea. Maybe the mod was done for a customer who backed out of a purchase. (limit power/noise from a high volt or unstable conventional power pack?) It is curious, if you find out more, please post what you learn, I don't run dcc but the various electronics solutions/setups really interest me.

[nfmisso]

A friend has asked me to have a look at this 5 axle diesel that I think is made by Kato although there is nothing on the loco to indicate manufacturer.
  ......

Highly unlikely to be manufactured by Kato - they put their mark very clearly on the bottom of the trucks.

[Jhanecker2]

To  Limey :  excuse my ignorance but what is a five axle diesel ?   I have heard of  two axle trucks  and three axle trucks but we usually have the same number of  axles  on both trucks of our diesels .  John II.

[jward]

on certain diesels equipped for passenger service, the weight of the locomotive was too heavy for 4 wheel trucks. in the case of the 5 axle diesel, a 6 wheel truck was added to the rear of the locomotive. perhaps the most famos 5 axle diesel was the emd fl9 built for new haven, which lasted until a few years ago in commuter service around new york city. fairbanks morse also built some 5 axle c liners. if i recall correctly, a canadian manufacturer made models of these in plastic a few years ago. other than those models, the rest were limited run brass models.

i suspect what the op has is one of those canadian models.

[WoundedBear]

That Canadian manfacturer was Rapido.....and they never did get the project to completion.

Read the link below.....

http://www.rapidotrains.com/express1.html

Sid

[ebtnut]

BTW, Fairbanks-Morse had one design of their C-Liners that had a two-axle front truck and three-axle rear truck.  If memory serves, they built a few for the NYC way back in the day.  I think AHM may even have made an HO model in plastic of it. 

[jward]

the ahm 5 axle c liner was in n scale, the HO one was a 4 axle version.

[Limey]

Hi folks, I finally found out this is a C.N.  C.Liner put out by True Line Trains of Canada.  It has a 2 axle truck on the front and a 3 axle truck on the rear.  It seems to be nicely made, a good heavy one piece cast metal body, can motor with universals to drive the trucks with pick ups on all wheels. Very quiet operation.  The only thing to identify manufacture is plastic cover over the fuel tank which indicates it is made in China ( where else ) for  Canadian Hobbycraft Ltd.  Kind of sparse on detailing but a very nice operating unit.

Regards, Limey.

[richg]

A picture is worth a thousand words. Post a couple photos using Photo Bucket.
That would amount to two thousand words and maybe a quicker solution to your friend's issue.

Lets us see what the packet looks like.

Rich

[ebtnut]

I was reminded that the New Haven FL-9's also had a B - A1A truck arrangement.

[Limey]

richg,
           Sorry I can't do the pictures you want, but I know you a very familiar with electronics so picture this 22 diodes soldered together in a circle positive to negative.  Solder an input wire to the circle, count off 11 diodes and solder on a take off wire.
   I know how a bridge rectifier is configured but this doesn't even conform to that.  The diodes are marked N4004 then underneath that G164.  I am interested on your take on this thing.
    BTW. I just cut the thing out and wired in an 8 pin socket the normal way and everything works fine. I did have to reset the decoder to factory specs and then re-program it though.

Regards Limey.

[jward]

1n4004 diodes drop about 0.7v, so 11 of them would have reduced the voltage to the motor by about 8v. the arrangement you described would have been a bi-polar way to drop that voltage. what they were hoping to accomplish by doing that I have no idea.