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..