I STARTED THIS POST & NOW I'M GOING to FINISH IT!! "REPAIRED IT" "GREAT LIONEL SERVICE".....LIONEL ES44AC Legacy Diesel "SMOKE FAN MOTOR" Stopped Working!!

John,

Received the 4 motors today, thank you.  All 4 motors were bad.  The torque is way low per spec, and when connected to the electronics to PWM the motors, they would not even spin.  I do not know why these motors failed, but will try and determine what happened to them.

Well, they were certainly bad, as they blinked away in the engine!

It's interesting that just powered by a bench supply they all seemed fine, even with the fan impeller on them and in a smoke unit.

I'm glad they were failing, at least you have samples to work with.

this is good info.

to add to the Lionel service move.  our club president talked with Lionel and they will be moving at the end of summer 2014.

John,

I just opened one of the motors, and found the brushes and commutator were quite dirty.  I cleaned the contacts with IPA, reassembled, and now the motor works as expected. 

It seems the motor was exposed to smoke fluid and my thinking at this point is that the fluid collected on the brushes and caused the build up of dirt and crud and this caused the motor to fail.

I plan to increase the drive levels on one of the failing motors from the electronics now, and try and get one of the failing motors to run...

Were any of the motors bad out of the box John? Any chance of too much fluid at the factory? Do they test them?

Changing the drive current had no effect on the motor operation, they are just bad and cannot be made to operate properly. 

jojofry, I can't claim that all failures are from fluid penetration, however the the ones I looked at had fluid in them.

I will do more testing, and if any more information comes to light I will update the status.

Smoke fluid, often glycerin, tends to creep and absorbs water. So I can see how it might get every where if one is the least bit careless. I'm not saying that is the reason or the only reason for failed motors either. At least, it does seem to be messy and why I think Lionel supplies a funnel and pipette. Thank you. I also got on the net and found some 1ml pipettes since the amount you want is something less than 1 ml each time.

To add another possibility, if an engine is stored in its box in a certain position such as on its side or upside down, may be some of the smoke fluid may creep into the motor and sit there till next time when it is used it shows a problem.

If you add smoke fluid to an engine with the shell off, you can see it wick across the top of the PCB on MTH units which places it close to port to the fan impeller chamber.  It is not a hard leap to understand it runs across the PCB and is available to drip in to the bottom of the chamber, than into the motor.

Part of the issue is the gasket soaks it up to.  I have seen this on Lionel engines also.  Swollen gaskets can also stop the impeller.

But it sounds like Jon, found some that just were not designed or manufactured correctly.  G

This is the same as testing with battery.  They spin fine with a constant current source or at higher voltages, but as Jon states, the PWM of the smarter smoke units, including MTH may not operate them correctly.

I wonder if the dirt causes noise on those rare occasions when MTH fans cause problems with the electronics.  G

I can fully understand the storage of the unit and that it must be positioned properly after running the engine and adding fluid, but...

Mine were brand new out of the box and exhibited the Fan Motor problem immediately after powering them up and no I did not add too much fluid.

So unless there is some sort of break in period where the motor may fail and trip the error code I feel there is still an underlying problem and am concerned for my 3 units.

The one sent back to Lionel with the coupler shorted and the fan motor problem, the coupler pinched wire was fixed but they could not find anything wrong with the fan motor or it's circuit.

Jon, thanks for looking into this, maybe some improvements in the motor design would eliminate this issue?  Also, perhaps it's possible to make the circuitry a bit more forgiving of the motor characteristics?  Given that the motors "seemed" to run fine on the bench and not draw excessive power, it seems like they may still have life in them.

Several of these were in smoke units that have the air tube to the smoke chamber, I'd think the smoke fluid had to make quite a journey to get into the motors.

John,

I changed the fan motor drive circuit quite a while back - it is in the production queue and will show up later this year.  It is 10x more drive level, but won't cure all of the fan motor problems - a bad motor is going to show up.  I also will stop the cab light blink on a failed motor with the new fan drive circuit, as the element won't overheat (when no airflow) with the new smoke controller design.

I also am perplexed by this issue.  I can't explain why my test locos that are 3 years old work fine to this day, same fan motor in them as they came with (GS-4, FEF-3)with countless hours on them.  Although it is a different motor in that vintage of loco!  Of the 4 motors you sent me, they don't spin when we lower the PWM to the idle fan speed, which is about 2/3 power.  The motors on my test locos still spins at 1/5 power.

I am going to run current draw tests on the motors you sent me, and I will post more as I find more information.

I look forward to your results Jon.   I wish I'd have kept more of the motors, I was putting them in the round file as I didn't feel I had any use for them.  I started keeping them after discussions started, so when I get a few more, I'll send them along as well.

The odd thing is, all of those would run on a bench supply down to about 2 volts.  I confess, I didn't try any of them on a PWM circuit as that's not something that convenient on my bench.  Maybe I'll connect a transistor drive to a function generator...

IS it possible that the Factory had received a batch of fans that were out of spec? such as the impedance of the motor was higher? Or the bushings were a bit tighter? or the magnets were not as magnetized as need be? Add to this the current sensing circuit may have drifted a bit out of spec due to components tolerance stack up and you know what will happen.

I am very glad you are looking at this issue Jon. I will be buying a bunch of Legacy steam and Diesel engines for the first time this year and it is good to know that Lionel is actively working on these type of issues.

John,

I tested the motors on a lab supply at various voltages, and the current drawn by them quite higher than a good motor.  One of them was drawing over an amp and not spinning at the rated RPM.  The typical run current on these motors is about 25ma.  These motors failed, simple as that.  My only clue is the commutator is "very dirty".

I can get the motors to operate at 5v(not to spec), so perhaps this is why you believe they are functional.  We reduce the drive level (they are rated 2v to 6v) to about 3.5v when the loco is not moving to give a pleasing smoke level, and at the reduced drive level, they do not spin properly or fail to spin at all.

I think the best solution is a new motor model/manufacturer.  I have recommended a new motor to evaluate and I will update folks when I have more data on the new motor.

John, Thank you for all of the help!

WOW!  When I checked several of the, they were drawing about 35-40ma at 5V, and that was the same as the new MTH motor I replaced them with.  I didn't test all of them, I surely would have noticed 1 amp!  I can certainly see why the circuit would complain at that level!  Maybe they don't age well in my junkbox.

Thanks for keeping us in the loop, hopefully we can close the book on the motor issues in the near future.

I received my ES44ac back yesterday from customer services.  Great service as always.  Again, this engine was new out of the box and 3 blinking cab lights happened right away.  I did not over fill the smoke unit with smoke fluid.  The tech wrote that he replaced Gasket / smoke funnel and plugged the smoke unit in and tested ran it with no problems.  No mentioning of replacing the motor.  I ran the engine for about 15 min last night and tonight with smoke unit on and there was no further problem.  Does the gasket have something to do with overheating of the smoke unit; therefore, causing the smoke unit to fail?  Ken

Thanks Jon, now that is making sense.  John, Time to calibrate the Fluke  G

remember the boxes are never kept up-right during shipping.

The new es44s have a gasket between the shell and the smoke unit and it swells up from the smoke fluid .. For all of us that own these I highly suggest you use a needle smoke bottle to add the fluid down in the funnel of the unit.. This will stop the gasket from getting smoke fluid on it .I have 2 of the new engines and the silicone gaskets have swollen up. 

If I open one up with the gasket in the smoke chamber, I carefully trim it so that the impeller doesn't have a chance to hit it and stall.

Does the gasket swell with smoke fluid directly touching it OR does it also swell by the smoke fluid passing by as it becomes smoke by the heating element?

Just to clarify, I do not believe that locos "should" be stored right side up. They get shipped across the contents and are stored in any which way. I was theorizing that IF a loco has tons of smoke fluid in the reservoir then it is possible if stored in a certain way that the smoke fluid may get into the motor..

Yes, thx, I understand. I thought the gasket even thu it is sandwiched may still get swollen by the fumes of the smoke fluid, if you see what I mean.

I can see that...when my GP30 had the really heavy thick smoke that flowed near the top of the engine, it left a film of smoke fluid. I could see it eventually soaking a gasket edge as it flows past.

I know it's been a while, but I was gone for a few weeks and I told Lionel to hold the Return of the Engine until I returned. I returned and told Lionel to please release the Engine Friday and I received the Engine Today (Tuesday). Took it out of the box and just tested it.ALL FUNCTIONS OPERATE!!! The SMOKE WORKS BETTER THAN IT DID,BRAND NEW OUT OF THE BOX!!! Before, between RPM Changes, very little Smoke was emitted, NOW it works like it should. I was charged $60.00 Labor plus $18.00 for the PCB and they paid for the return. I feel that is reasonable. GREAT LIONEL SERVICE! KUDO"S TO YOU LIONEL.

FREDSTRAINS

Let us know how you feel when you get it back and test it.

This is the best information yet, and most promising, on smoke problems- do I replace the regulators?  Replace the fan motors? Take the fan motors apart and clean the brushes? Do I use a needle applicator for the fluid?  I admit, I am a heavy user of smoke fluid, but smoke is my top priority.  My legacy steam turbine 6-11417 ran one month before 3 blinking lights.  Same with my legacy PRR FM, and my legacy 2-8-2 B&O 6-11280.  My other legacy 2-8-2 no problems, same with the legacy K-4, 2 legacy RS-11s, and one other legacy FM- BUT FOR HOW LONG?.  I get one engine smoke unit fixed under warranty, they tell me they just "adjusted" it, it runs fine for a week or two, and then 3 blinking lights.   I am looking forward to the day of a new motor, or regulator board, or whatever, to have reliable smoke, and I am glad Lionel is looking at your failed motors, Jon.  Or maybe a failed "diagnostics" circuit, and it's not the motors at all?!!!