Peter, from your description, it sounds like a "split frame" gearbox with a cover plate that is shorting it out. Did the cover plate originally have paint on it that insulated it but is now worn through?
I'm thinking (which is dangerous) that you may need to use insulating screws on one side as well as insulating the cover plate. The other option is to make a plastic (phenolic? laminate? other?) cover plate. At least you located the origin of the short! Darrell S. --- In [email protected], Peter Vanvliet <pavanvliet@...> wrote: > > Hi All, > > For those of you who have one of these chassis... > > My Railmaster Hobbies RS-1 has been running well both at home and on our > club layout. After it ran at a show in September, I put it on my home > layout and the layout immediately beeped to indicate a short. Today I > finally took some time to find out the source of the short. I narrowed > it down to one of the North Yard chassis' trucks. I removed the truck > from the frame, and it shorts when I hold the meter probes to the two > small screws on either side of the gear box (vertical metal sheets). I > double-checked the remainder of the frame and there is no short in it. > The truck is the source of the problem. By the way, I removed the > sideframe assembly from the truck to make that it wasn't causing a short > between the wheels (which it wasn't). > > The truck still looks like it was when I first put the engine together, > with no metal shards or any debris in the gears. The last thing I did > was remove the metal plate on the bottom of the truck, thereby exposing > the gears. It turns out that the short went away when I removed that > plate. Loosely placing the plate back on the truck caused no short until > I tightened it down with the two screws. > > My question is two-fold: How is it that this truck works normally > because isn't the bottom metal plate connecting the two sides of the > truck together (my other truck doesn't have this problem)? Second, have > any of you encountered this problem with this particular truck and how > did you resolve it? I am just wondering if this is a "known" issue and I > am just not aware of it... > > I guess I can just slip a piece of paper in where the screws connect the > bottom plate to the rest of the truck... > > Thanks for any help, > - Peter. > > -- > Peter Vanvliet (pavanvliet@..., or peter@...) > Houston, Texas > > "It is easy to give up; anyone can do that..." > > http://pmrr.org/ (my model railroad - RSS feed <http://pmrr.org/rss.xml>) > http://fourthray.com/ (my company) > http://houstonsgaugers.org/ (model railroad club) > -- > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] > ------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
