Mobile Phones, Dcc Decoders And Worn Motors!

[stockers]

I have got a bit of a problem and wondered if anyone has had experience of this.
I am trying to mend a Kiss Rhatia (Like Heidi). Its made of brass and is a lovely heavy model, fitted with an ESU decoder.

Apparently it was running perfectly well one day when a mobile phone rang in close proximity to the loco. Its never worked very well since.

I have cleaned up the wheels, checked the pick up bullets (and the back of wheel where the bullet rubs) and it sort of runs but not very well. It needs a high speed setting to keep it going and its not smooth.The current consumption is not high - less than half an amp. However, when I try to run it on my old half amp LGB transformer/controller it appears to operate the overload cutout. Same with the SprogII.
The CVs have all read using the Sprog and they look OK to me.

My first though is the motor is beginning to go home, but the story of the mobile bothers me - anyone else heard about this?

The loco looks like a pig to dismantle so I have not gone there yet.


Any ideas

 

[Madman]

Hmm, I have often wondered about the billions of signals flying through the air around us......

 

[PhilP]

Well, in theory, the brass body should have shielded the ESU from the RF. - If anything, I would have thought a plastic bodied loco would be at greater risk??

I would guess the motor may have been 'on the way' for some time, and it is a coincidence. if the motor is marginal, it might have pulled a little too much current from the decoder, and that is now not performing as it should.

I would get to the motor, and isolate it.. Run it DC, and see how it goes.
I might also rig the decoder to feed a Buhler motor, and see how that runs from the ESU..

Part of the problem is not knowing the characteristics of the loco / motor to start with.

 

[PaulRhB]

I think timing coincidence is more likely than a phone frying a decoder. It would have to be a very strong interference and I've never known the phone to upset ESU decoders sitting on the bench when testing and setting up decoders. Maybe I don't have enough friends to ring me enough?
Testing like Phil suggests is really the only way to tie it down and one other option is to read the cv's and the write them all back. I've twice had an ESU decoder apparently die, read perfectly but still not work, but fine when the cv's are written again! This might possibly be another variation of that. In my case one was actually an Lgb analogue controller that seemed to upset it.