Hornby R3783 'Southern' Terrier' - Running Erratically

[latestarter]

My Hornby R3783 'Southern' terrier (DCC fitted) is running in a stop-start fashion, almost everywhere on my layout, and in places where other locos have no such problems. It almost always needs 'the hand of God' to start it from stopped, and only runs smoothly at above 60% speed. I'm fairly sure that it's not the track, and I reset CV 10 to 0, as I heard that might cause stuttering motion, but it's not helped.

 

Is there any basic work I can do to try and fix it, bearing in mind that my technical skills with locos are limited?

 

Thanks for any suggestions.

[banburysaint]

I suspect it is probably related to the pick ups which I found are fragile on the terrier and easily deformed. As a test see if the locomotive runs when you only apply power to one pair of wheels you may find there are some that aren't supplying power to the motor consistently.

[andyman7]

I've had several of these (my son kept buying them...) and the running seemed to vary quite a bit. One, an LSWR example, had been DCC fitted and behaved exactly like yours. In the end I carefully cleaned the pickups and wheels and cleaned, straightened and adjusted every pickup and continuity tested them to ensure they were all working, and it was much better after that.

[Right Away]

Echoing the above replies; the engines’ light weight together with wheel pick-up wipers which are very fragile having very little “spring” in them, are the main issue. Only sure fix is to whip the four keeper plate screws out, lift this away from the wheels and very carefully bend each wiper outwards. Much care is needed when refitting the keeper plate as these extremely frail wipers are easily distorted as they are passed behind each wheel.

 

[latestarter]

2 minutes ago, Right Away said:

Much care is needed when refitting the keeper plate as these extremely frail wipers are easily distorted as they are passed behind each wheel.

 

Thanks very much for this. You actually hit the nail on the head. I have been on  to Hornby today, because one of the the copper wires went missing. I'm not sure if this happened when I was trying to fix them, or prior to opening it up. They are sending me a new chassis part with the pickups attached, for free.