Graham Radish

In the case of this loco due to it having a plastic housing, i highly recommend you thermal epoxy a 1mm sheet of aluminium to the bottom of the motor, or wherever you can find clearance, wow this is a very poor design im not surprised they run so bad, years ago i had the Bachmann voyager set, it also ran like a pig. you could also make a U shaped heatsink that fits around the motor itself, you could either use thermal epoxy or computer CPU thermal heatsink compound (ARCTIC MX4) if you can get it to clip on. thermal epoxy has a bond stronger than the motor itself so its never gonna come off, as i say doing this will dramatically drop temperatures in some cases it will halve it. as it stands theres no escape path for the heat and it just keeps building up, doing this will cure it permanently and double the motors life. All farish locos have the same problem but their split metal chassis makes it easy to add thermal material. But before you do anything lift up the carbon bush holders and add a drop of servisol super10 to each side, this stuff takes wear off the bushes and motor stator and ensures optimal performance. Note: due to this being OO gauge and not N, you should have enough room to fit a 20mm x 10mm fan, thats another option. if this is wired directly to the motor it will speed up and slow down on demand. using a rectifier of course, or can easily be directly connected to a DCC decoders function output then use a function button on your controller to turn it off and on and control its speed. Looking again at this if the chassis has a metal bottom, simply add a piece of thermal pad (1mm) to the underside of the motor. and the chassis, this will cure it. Another option is you could solder a thin sheet of steel to either side of the motor, hope this helps m8 Bachmann could easily cure this by adding 30mm fan blades to the back of each inertia weights.

Yep sorry about this haha

Hello, the thermal pad just goes between the motor and the metal chassis of the loco, or you can use a 2 part thermal epoxy to do the same thing, the pad doesnt need to be glued as such its a gap filler, it transfers heat directly from the motors shell to the chassis.

For great success avoid lead free solder like covid 19, even cheap silverline flux will help solder flow much better, although some people say do it, DONT use plumbers flux. use rosin. and if soldering inside locos, make sure you line the edges of the bodyshell with aluminium foil as a slip of the hand will destroy it.

There is a cure for this, its getting slower because the protective windings in the motor are burning hot, if its 60c outside it will be 80c inside. The overheating motor problem is something Bachmann or Hornby have never sorted out, but there is a cure, what you need to do is get this from ebay: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Arctic-Thermal-Pad-6-W-mK-120-x-20-x-1-5mm-for-Intel-AMD-CPUs-No-Silver/114255283628?epid=16038982004&hash=item1a9a2545ac:g:CloAAOSwGD9e4Qpp This is the only advantage ringfield motors have over sealed types, with a ringfield the movement alone cools it. Theres nothing actually wrong with the motor itself but there will be very quick if you dont sort it. you need 1mm thermal pads or 2 part thermal epoxy. attach a cm square of it to each side of the motor between the motor and the metal chassis, the heat will drop from about 65c right down to 30c as then the chassis becomes a very good heatsink, the motors arent heastsunk, this is a very stupid thing to do in a high speed train, in the end the stator of the motor will burn out if you dont do this. The heat just builds up until as i say, bye bye motor, this would cost Bachmann or Hornby literally pence per model to fix but theyre too lazy to do it This problem lies in all farish models too. if there is no air cooling to a motor you need to add a compound/heatsink or this could be planned obsolescence at it's finest. regards.

Well this is my second farish class 70, and as i have said before these are an absolute swine to work on, their bodies are very narrow meaning wiring and decoder placement has to be 100% perfect or the bottom wont go back on, well iv'e managed it at last, this uses the zimo micro sound decoder from digitrains in Lincoln, but even with such a small pcb you have literally 1mm margin of error, tolerances are so tight even a single decoder wire that's not routed properly will stop the loco going back together. On my previous class 70 i did the all wheel pickup mod, and i have done the same to this one, in my eyes its a must for smooth running and for n gauge locos in general, while i don't even have the option of fitting a 25v 470uF capacitor due to there being no room inside, i do not like them anyway, especially when using traincontroller. If your loco doesn't move properly with 12 pickups then there is definitely something wrong with the track or wheels/dirt for example. The key to perfect running lies in contact quality and weight, a capacitor will not cure this only proper maintenance will, for this i use the very expensive (but totally worth it) DeOxit D100 contact cleaner, i bought a 2ml tube of this two years ago and still have a quarter of it left, so as you can see you don't need much, only the tiniest of drops per pickup and one small drop on the inside of each wheel, this stuff is incredible, as you run your loco it cleans and ensures pristine electrical contact, for ensuring perfect track contact i use Servisol super 10, applied on a cotton bud to the rails, this stuff is also magical. I have used Servisol for the best part of 20 years now. Right back to the 70, with much help from here concerning decoder settings (as the yellow wire 'Fo' for the rear lighting was damaged) i have managed to get everything working properly, i have learned so much about CV settings now and i'm very grateful for this so thank you! These are all the settings made in order for everything to function: DIRECTIONAL LIGHTS CV34=4, CV35=0 SWITCHING FROM SUSI TO LOGIC LEVEL FOR CAB LIGHTING CV124=BIT7 FUNCTION KEYS FOR CAB LIGHTING (DIRECTIONAL) FORWARD, CV430=20 (FUNCTION KEY 20) CV432=6 REVERSE, CV436=21 (FUNCTION KEY 21) CV440=5 ENGINE COMPARTMENT LIGHT CV42=8 (FUNCTION KEY 8) RESISTOR VALUES CAB LIGHTS=270 OHMS ENGINE COMPARTMENT BACKLIGHT=470 OHMS Here above you see i have also added an orange LED for the engine compartment backlight, for this i pierced 4 holes in the correct places with a needle, then fitted a surface mount 1206 SMT orange led to the inside of the roof (a piece of cut down led strip with just one LED and a new resistor) then used a 2.5cm piece of a laminating sheet as a diffuser, this carries the light so now the single led lights up all the holes made at just the right brightness with a 470 Ohm resistor and the light looks slightly holographic. On the real locomotives these lights are there for diagnostics and they are very noticeable especially at night, for this i used the F8 key to turn it off and on (CV42=8 brown wire) and i tell you what as well since i discovered single core decoder wire i won't use anything else now, its much easier to work with and its stronger for jobs this fiddly. Everything's put back together now and all is well, however i will say this, i DO NOT recommend adding DCC sound to this loco if you are a beginner, i seriously think it would put you off DCC for life! they are horrible to work on, i rate this job on this loco at 9/10 in difficulty, even a class 08 would be easier. Speaking of the sound, this is where it gets interesting, while i could have mounted an ESU sugar-cube type speaker to the top of the chassis, i would have needed to file down the top of the chassis (not really a problem) but i fitted my speaker to the fuel tank area, i ground down enough of the bottom of the chassis that i needed then fitted the bare speaker (without backbox) to underneath the motor area with 1mm double sided 3M sticky foam, this gives me much more room on the top of the chassis for wiring, the speaker is downward firing and the whole of the fuel tank is now the 'back box' i also added strips of this foam to the edges to seal it up against the sides of the removable baseplate, but i didn't seal up the underside of the fuel tank, i cut out parts of it discretely without damaging it to the point that it looked a mess, once i made the holes needed i glued in a piece of "modders mesh" with poly cement, this is plastic mesh used to filter dust away from PC fans, it was perfect for the job, underneath now looks like a proper speaker grill. While some of these types of speakers will sound ok once you attach a totally sealed back box, it will also totally kill any treble in the sound resulting in it sounding muddy and muffled, the main sound level is set to 128 (half way) Even though this is working perfect this will be the last class 70 i buy, they're just too fiddly to work on and very frustrating at times, class 37's/66's/58's and shunters for me from now on. Advice: when working on any n gauge loco you must wear vinyl/cotton gloves, the small decals will get destroyed with constant bare finger handling, this is much less of a problem with OO gauge locos, but still, wear them anyway because a single static charge can kill the decoders logic chip. EDIT: I have removed the factory pickups they are a waste of time, instead i've soldered ultrafine copper wire directly to the pickups and routed them to the chassis screw terminals, no more cutouts or stalling now its perfect. this is pretty much the way lima do it. Some pictures to follow shortly...

Thing is its all true fella, mac osx compared to windows is laughable, if i was making an app i wouldn't make one for apple either, they are a tiny minority. last year there were more linux users. Digikeijs did the right thing.

Ok fair enough, but not having mac support is not the issue, OSX is a minority os same as linux, for digikeijs to make a mac app wouldnt make sense, i mean how many people would take £1,700 laptops to a show? new ipads are about £750, apples way of doing things is horrid, once something stops working its time to buy a new laptop lol. Im lucky not to have that freezing issue, but i bought mine with 1.54 firmware.

Yes but all electronics (especially computer interface based) have problems, thats the nature of software, but the dr5000 unit itself is bloody brilliant, most of the time people are just trying to justify their expensive purchases after all the more expensive the better right? lol it don't work that way, if you browse this site you will see all problems people are having with the z21AND the lenz systems, they are not immune no matter the price the dr5000 is a wonderful little unit with a lot of useful protocols, as for ease of use its the best ive ever come across. I was making a valid point in the dr5000 being £60 cheaper than a toy. as i said, more expensive is always better yea>? at least digikeijs are still supporting end users with firmware updates. when people look down at you for having cheaper equipment thats pretty lame.

The z21 and lenz have problems too, just different problems, only issue ive ever had on my dr5000 is an issue with the wifi app, never had any issues with the unit itself, its been rock solid, i cant justify paying an extra £250 for something that does the same thing. where did you get the unreliable performance idea from? this has been the best system ive ever owned and its £60 less than a Hornby elite (which is a toy)

I should hope so both the z21 and lenz systems are over 3 times the price of the dr5000, the digikeijs system holds it own against them both tbh.

Im not surprised at all about the Hornby spiking, after all primarily they are a toymaker, as far as their locos go i think even the older lima had more accurate bodyshells

Its come a long way since release but there are still a couple of wifi issues although i rarely use the wifi funtionality itself, the infrared functions are more appealing to me i have a spare logitech 650 universal remote control once i figure out how to use it and what the codes are will be great as it has a colour lcd. ill use it to control the layouts lighting.

The digikeijs ecosystem to me is absolutely incredible, so many connection options in such a small box, the only bad thing I can say about it is the stock software, its very buggy, I should imagine the next firmware should sort the wifi issues out. if using N gauge the 3.25amp amps it provides is enough for about 14 sound locos probably more.

Im well chuffed with it hehe, although even my second farish class70 they are a swine to work on, due to them being so narrow, i think im gonna stick to class 37's in future maybe a 66, what i did for the speaker was take advantage of the fuel tank area, the whole of the fuel tank is a "back box" for the speaker sounds throaty now. sealed up with milliput black 2 part epoxy so its air tight. you could use "cotton bud tubing" as a bass reflex too

The dr5000 is supported, its under the digitrax/loconet system. go on youtube and watch rudys modelrailway videos, in fact download them all, hes great.

Ok this works brill! i couldnt get it working at first but once i changed cv432 to 5 instead of 3 it worked! same goes for changing cv440 to 6 instead of 4, dont know why lol. anyway its all working now Once i changed them from susi to logic outputs the 470ohm resistors i fitted were absolutely perfect in brightness! and now the cab lights work independent of the front and tail lights - ive learned a lot from this thread awesome stuff indeed. this is going straight in my model railway folder for future reference.

Amazing stuff nigel, im going to print this information on paper and get to work, yea will be a single 0402 led at either end, ill put a variable resistor in series with the led and adjust it to a suitable brightness then measure it to add the correct resistor, i didnt even know you could do this at all to be honest, but yea about 8ma per led as i suppose the good thing is cab lighting shouldnt be too bright anyway. Ive got the zimo cv list open on a pdf at the moment, i understand all the basics like speed limiting, but when it comes to stuff like this i get stuck lol! anyway thank you very much this is a great help to me.

At first i loved the idea of motors with built in decoders, however in the long run i wished id have bought the far superior tortoise motors, the sound transmission from the ip digitals even with decent foam ruins everything for me.

The next time i fit point motors they will be the tortoise types, my cobalt digital ip's are a no fuss "built in decoder" luxury, however the noise is unbearable to me, not excessively loud but loud enough to ruin automated running sessions, im sure the techs over at dcc concepts will cure this problem in their later product lines, but as it stands i regret fitting them really, i'd take a bit of extra wiring over the noise any day.

Right, ive test installed a "cab light" (not installed in the loco yet) with a 0406 SMT yellow LED and 470ohm resistor, the led is lit but its too dim, so i suspect a 270ohm resistor would be about right for the job or 2x470ohm resistors in series, as im going to be using the "servo" or "susi" outputs for cab lighting, how do i go about making them directional using 2xfunction keys (function key 20 and function key 21) ? Thanks.

Oh im not trying to be a dick, and im sorry if i come across that way, i never explain myself very well due to learning difficulties, but what i was trying to say is mains ac power for example, it doesnt matter which way live and neutral are wired for a lot of things, ie: my digikeijs dr5000 is powered by a mains figure8 plug that can work in both directions, in the case of dcc modified ac track power, it carries sync pulses to and from the decoder. its like a hybrid thing. another example is speakers, they can be out of phase not polarity as audio is ac. its because the ac on dcc track power is modified so much (about 7-11Khz) standard multimeters are not accurate you need to have a visual on a screen of whats going on, a multimeter is only really showing half the story and even dmm's from the same manufacturer can give different readings, simply because theyre not equipped for such high frequencies, you will get a "ball park" but it will never be accurate without the proper tool for the job. to measure absolute perfect output from the track standard household dmm's are no good. either a proper track tester or a handheld scope is the ideal thing

Ac current doesn't have a polarity, it has a phase.

Track maintenance is a part of the hobby, to me steel is no problem especially on a small diorama, i am aware that they make aluminium rail as well, simply solder to the rail joiners.