Delph - Jubilee electrical fault fixed (I think)
Entry posted by Dave Holt
421 views
Last time I took my Jubilee. 45701, to run on the NLG test track, it refused to move and showed a fault message "AU5" or "AUS" on the controller. I thought at the time that maybe a pick-up had moved in transport or that there was a chip fault. Anyway, try fiddling with the controller I could not get it to move so it was put away for a future time.
Last weekend, I was chatting to "Barrow Road" at the Leamington show and the subject of a visit to run suitable locos was mentioned. Now, a Jubilee is a very suitable loco for this layout, so my thoughts turned to trying to sort the problem out. The main issue was the necessity of dismantling the model, with the risk of damage to the finish, in order to access the suspect items. Before starting, I again tried the loco on my short test track and had intermittent movement and then error messages, this time error 01 and 02.
So, reluctantly I separated the tender, removed the boiler and finally the footplate/cab from the chassis. At each stage i checked for shorts of items out of place but to no avail. It appeared to be a damaged chip or burnt out motor (coreless type). I decided to unsolder the chip leads and refit the bridging bars to enable DC operation to check the motor, starting with the LH side. When I turned the chassis over to do the RH side, I discovered that the wire connecting the RH pick-ups to the connection pad was hanging free. It appears that I had made a dry joint which must have made intermittent contact - hence the problem.
I quickly remade the failed connection and then reconnected the LH side chip wires and, hey presto, normal behaviour when placed on the test rack.
The loco was re-checked at each stage of reassembly although there were a couple of hiccups along the way. First, I couldn't find the screw which holds the front of the footplate to the chassis, search as I might. So a new screw was fashioned - it's a very short 8BA but has to have the head reduced in diameter to fit. Then, as I prepared to re-attach the tender, the special screw through the draw bar pinged out of the tweezers. An hour or so on hands and knees failed to find it but did find the missing footplate screw! No option but to make a replacement. The original included a long, Alan Gibson crank-pin bush and I could not find another despite searching my spares boxes and several other Brassmasters loco/tender kits. In the end, something was made up from brass tube and the flange which broke off a 2 mm pin-point bearing which I had been trying to use as an alternative.
Of coarse, I got completely wrapped up in all this, in my determination to get it sorted, and was slightly horrified to discover it was the early hours of this morning when I finally finished.
Despite the trials and tribulations and the rather late night, I have now got a fully functioning Jubilee ready to join the fleet.
As a change, today I've been making a replacement tip for the spokes on one of my large umbrellas, which came to grief in the high winds and heavy rain at the Leamington Show, and making two sets of long fire irons to go on the tenders of the Jubilee and the Crab.
Dave.
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