AMac

Hi ISW. Good tip. I did wrap the blue, yellow and white wire ends individually with kapton tape first then wound all 3 together with more kapton tape. As the motor worked at first without any problems I thought I would check just to make sure some tape hadn't shifted/ripped or whatever. No luck there - meaning the wires are still insulated from each other. Cheers

Hi Pete the Elaner. Thanks for that suggestion. I assumed the ringfield is not the type that causes problems. It did have that short brown wire that connected from the brush /retainer strip to the bogie chassis. I couldn't find any connection/contact from the brush retainer strip to the chassis or any metal lumps sticking out so pretty sure I'm OK there. Cheers

Hi. I have converted my old APT-P to DCC but a shorting problem has occurred. Long explanation coming up! I cleaned the ringfield motor and tested this prior to the conversion and all seemed fine. I then wired up a NCE chip (4 funtion ? 8 wires). I tested this and all seemed to work fine for the first few (very short) test runs. However, the motor will run a short distance then will stop/ won't respond with a clearly audible humming noise. I changed my NCE Power Cab to display current and noticed that the amps would jump up to 1.4 to 2.4 A! I believed I hadn't missed a trick with isolating /avoiding cross connections but clearly wrong about that. The insulating tape is in place. I tried painting the tabs that hold the springs/brushes in place and the cast metal bogie frame with nail polish but that hasn't worked. I noted on the service sheet that the all metal wheels and insulated wheels were on the opposite side to what I had on the non-powered bogie so tried swapping these around but there was zero response when I hooked back up and applied power. I then checked my earlier videos prior to DCC conversion and saw that the wheels were what I originally had and opposite to what I read the service sheet showing. I swapped the wheels back and the motor worked but quickly stopped and the current sky rocketed again. I did have a bent axle on the non-power bogie so bent this back as close to being aligned so not perfect. Could this have caused an issue? Any ideas? Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated! See the photos below:

Hi Geoff and CloggyDog, thanks for confirming the terminals and help my understanding. I'm just getting back into railway modelling so I've done a fair bit of reading but still virtually no "doing"! Thanks again to all for all the advice, Alastair

Hi RedgateModels, Many thanks for your help. I didn't expect an answer so quickly! Yep too easy - I tend to over-think things especially when something is new to me. BUT just to make sure, are the motor terminal where I've marked in yellow below?

Hi, I have some old locos that I am converting to DCC. One of these is a Lima Class 20 (about 25 yrs old?) which was kindly given to me. The engine works fine. I have seen a couple of videos on converting this type but they a re slighting different - essentially a simple pair of connections. However the version of motor I have has more connections. I believe there is a capacitor and a pin the goes through the motor casing -everything all connected. I am nervous about connecting up as I'm sure I'll leave an electrical connection between the rail pick up and motor because I don't know what's what here. I'd really appreciate advice on what is going on and more importantly, how to connect the decoder. The decoder I've bought for this conversion is a Hornby TTS Class 20 chip. By the way, is this a can motor? Kind Regards, Alastair