CraigB

I got the springs yesterday from Rapido. Thankfully with additional spares since the process of swapping them out is a little fiddly and it turns out I don’t have the greatest fine motor control. One took off like it had been shot out of cannon and I bent another. However the good news is that it solved the problem and it’s back running smoothly again. There’s a small pause on each rotation when it’s running backwards, which I think is something binding. I’ll have to open it back up and investigate but otherwise I’m really happy with the outcome considering it was basically inoperable before.

Update: Rapido has got back to me and have confirmed that what I’m experiencing is indeed the springs and that effectively they’re not transferring the full current even though there’s continuity. Improved replacement springs are going to wing their way to me across to the other side of the world shortly. Looking positive and I’ll share the result once the transplant is complete.

Well I bit the bullet and pulled the springs out to inspect. One was compressed but the others were fine. So I’ve taken off the shell and done continuity tests from the wheels to the circuit board and all the way to pins on the plug for the decoder. Continuity is all fine and sitting the loco on powered tracks and measuring the voltage confirms the pickups are actually fine. I sat the loco on the tracks with the decoder in place and the firebox led lit and gently moved the loco laterally and along the track. Decoder stays on and led stays lit. Then I moved the throttle forward and it died. Left it on the track and within a minute the led will turn back on. I guess this means a fault on the PCB somewhere, probably a capacitor? And probably only way to resolve is a replacement board from Rapido? Who have yet to acknowledge the warranty form..

Good to know. I’m fairly new to the hobby so still grappling with a lot of new skills so no plans to tackle P4 yet (the less than prototypical track is bothering me so it could be sooner rather than later..)

That’s quite a likely scenario, I had mistakenly run into a mis aligned point..

Mine has run flawlessly for a year and until this week was the best loco I’ve ever bought. Then this week it won’t run more than half a rotation and on investigation I’ve narrowed it down to the pickups and likely broken springs or similar?r? I’ve read that this may be a known fault so I’ve registered on Rapido’s warranty page.

Agreed, the 16xx was the first loco that I’ve bought that ran flawlessly straight out of the box and at very low crawl speeds.

Thanks folks for info, looks like I’ll follow up with Rapido and see if I can get the replacements. Thanks for the photos Re6/6, how did the P4 conversion work out? I saw a number of posts on the possibility of a P4 conversion but there was some doubt that the chassis design allowed for the wider spacing?

So my just over 1 year old Rapido 16xx, bought through Model Rail, has basically stopped operating. It ran flawlessly for a year being the best of my fleet of locos for solid and slow running. Track I’d fine and other locos are running without issue. The 16xx exhibits a lack of power unless nudged (the firebox led powers on) but within half a rotation it will stop and the LED powers off. looking at the wheels shows no major dirt build up and I’ve cleaned all the wheels and the pickups. One pickup at the middle wheel set doesn’t make contact with the wheel. I took the DCC decoder out and put the DC blanking plug back in and tested it with a DC controller and bare contacts. Looks like the middle contacts when applied directly from the DC controller supply power fine but the outer sets do not supply power even when DC is applied directly to them. My suspicion is that there must be conducting springs pushing the contacts onto the inside of the wheels and that these have either compressed or broken. Yet to hear back from Model Rail or Rapido but since I live in NZ, sending it back for repair isn’t going to be an option. (I’ve done repairs before but this Rapido 16xx looks a lot more complicated than the Bachmann Jinty wheel set replacement I’ve tackled before). Any thoughts or recommendations before I tear it down? I might post a photo or two of the contacts when I can..