Massoth eMOTION Power Cap Micro

T

Tony F73E

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I want to install one of the Massoth eMOTION Power Cap Micros into a Bachmann Davenport diesel. These loco's are four wheeled with no skates and thus stalling on dead frogs or dirty track is an issue. All the blurb indicates that you need a decoder but as I'm old school and analogue only is this really the case? The only thing I can think of is that with DCC there is a constant voltage on the track to charge the capacitors whereas with analogue the voltage is variable and for realistic speeds probably quite low. Any ideas please?

Thanks, Tony.
 
Beware. The capacitor is polarity sensitive, the track power is not!
 
As I understand it, they are strictly for decoder-equipped locos only - and even then, you can't run the loco on analogue as the fitting of the powercap unit means the decoder has to be set to DCC-only rather than left on the DCC/Analogue option (at least this is the case with the units that Muns wired up to LS decoders for me).

I think you will have to look at other methods of ensuring power continuity with the Davenport, maybe extra pickups on a piece of rolling stock wired to the loco?

Jon.
 
Tony,
I have not tried this suggestion as yet but initially intended for 'OO' scale motors. Take two polarised capacitors of say 4700uF 25 - 35 volts rating and solder the two negative terminals together. Then take the two free positive leads and solder to the motor terminals (one to each).

By doing this the capacitor becomes non-polarised and thus is NOT polarity sensitive. However, ganging the capacitors together as such does reduce the value by half with resultant 2350uF rating.

You do not have to purchase an expensive Massoth microcap. Capacitors are relatively inexpensive. You could experiment with larger capacitors to attempt to get the 'battery' effect to smooth out track dead spots. However, increasing capacitor value increases the overall size of the package.
 
Gents,

Thanks for the responses - I might try some experiments on a spare motor out of a loco and see how it goes.

Tony.
 
Also worth checking the roller pickups on the Davenport and that the backs of the wheels are clean as well as the treads. George Schreyer posted about his experiences where he found the "bullets" for the rollers needed to be shimmed outward a little to ensure they remained in contact with the wheels at full sideways play. Mine had this problem, it was a simple fix and it's been much better since.
Sorry, cannot post the link to George's page as I'm @ work but google should find for you.
 
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