No steam loco chuffing sounds but all other sounds ok

Try increasing the volume of sounds from your controller.  Could be an out of adjustment of your chuff switch or a broken chuff switch.

If this is the 6-82528 locomotive, there is no chuff switch, the chuffs are generated from the tach information by the RCMC control board.  I'd try doing the AUX1-VolUp sequence a couple of times, that changes the "engine" sounds volume independent of the other sounds.

Press the whistle button ONE time then keep hitting the number 1 button on the keypad.

Thanks John and Jim; it worked! Hitting the aux-1 first and then pumping up the volume did the trick. I learned something . Thank you.

Thank you Marty Fitz. I enjoyed your story on a recent O-gauge DVD.

I have a JLC Challenger with the same problem, although I have not been able to restore the chuffing sound.  I have tried AUX1+1 to increase the volume and still no chuff.

I will say that this particular engine had a short in the tender that I had to fix with some electrical tape over the pick-up roller screw heads.  That fixed the short, but no chuffing.  Bell and whistle sounds are normal.  I pulled and re-seated all boards in the tender, checked the volume pot and made sure the slider switch on the bottom of the tender was set to Rail Sounds.  I even replaced all boards in the tender with new ones from Lionel.

Any additional thoughts?

Jon

Jon Henshey posted:

I have a JLC Challenger with the same problem, although I have not been able to restore the chuffing sound.  I have tried AUX1+1 to increase the volume and still no chuff.

I will say that this particular engine had a short in the tender that I had to fix with some electrical tape over the pick-up roller screw heads.  That fixed the short, but no chuffing.  Bell and whistle sounds are normal.  I pulled and re-seated all boards in the tender, checked the volume pot and made sure the slider switch on the bottom of the tender was set to Rail Sounds.  I even replaced all boards in the tender with new ones from Lionel.

Any additional thoughts?

Jon

Quick check, do you have another TMCC engine to swap tenders? If the tender works I'd say it is the engine. Think these have a cam trigger.

The JLC Challenger is a TMCC locomotive with a chuff switch on one of the driver axles.  Check for either a broken wire, misadjusted switch, or possibly a defective switch.  Since the whistle and bell work in command mode, the tender is fine, it's receiving the IR signals.

I put another tender behind the Challenger and it works just fine; chuffing, crew talk, everything.  The issue is most certainly in the tender.  I would think the next most likely suspect would be the slider switch for Signalsounds / Railsounds.  Any good way to check that or should I just replace it and see?  Anyone know where I could get that .30 cent switch, without paying $10 shipping?

Of course you all may have something else I should check.

Thoughts?

Jon

Since the switch being open gives you full RailSounds, it's unlikely that it's the switch.  You don't need it anyway, if the switch is really doing it, you can just take one wire off and insulate it, job done.

OK, if it's not the switch, what should I check?

Well, the quick check would be to swap the sound board with another engine and see if there's an issue with the RS board.  Maybe it thinks it sees that switch and it really doesn't.

Ok.  I just need to know if there are any cautions with swapping sound boards.  The locomotive that I used the tender from was a Lionmaster PRR T1.  I chose that simply because they were produced around the same time and the IR tether looks the same.  Swapping boards may have some other considerations and I don't want to ruing my T1.  Is this one ok to swap or should I find something else?

The RS4 and RS5 boards will all swap pretty freely, there's no issue of "blowing something up" doing this test.  Obviously, it wants to be another TMCC locomotive that we're doing the swap from.

OK, thanks.  It will take me a few days before I can swap them.  My grandson was born this morning, so I'll be doing what grandpas do for a few day.

Thanks so much for the help. 

I love these things, but it seems that there is always something to fix on them.  I suppose that's what make the hobby so much fun.  I love fixing stuff.

Jon

Gunrunnerjohn,

I swapped out the sound boards and determined that it is fine (challenger board made chuffing sounds in the PRR T-1).  I disconnected the wire from the top of the motherboard that goes to the RS/SS switch and insulated, still no chuffing.

I will say that when I replaced the motherboard, I had to take the two wires that come up through the board, from the IR tether out of the molex connector.  I couldn't remember which one went in which spot when I reassembled the molex connector.  I looked at the T-1 board to determined the placement, but now I'm wondering if that might have something to do with it.

What do the two wires that come from the IR tether do?  If I have them in the wrong spots, will the locomotive run?  You mentioned earlier in this conversation that there is something in the engine that tells the sound board when to chuff; does that come through the IR tether and if I have those wires backwards, might that be causing this problem?

Could I do any damage by changing the location of those two wires to see if that is the issue?

Thanks,

Jon

Reversing those would certainly cause no chuff, but if the sensor were reversed, no serial data would get through, thus no whistle or bell.  The IR tether sends the serial data to the tender, all the command functions that are responded to by the tender would be handled by the same IR tether data.  Since another tender worked and had chuff, it would seem highly unlikely there's an issue with the locomotive IR data.

I'm somewhat at a loss without seeing it.  I'm sure something is escaping description, because the chuffing is just a function of the commands received by the sound board.  Since you've already verified the sound board works elsewhere, I can't imagine what would be stopping it.  The AD-20 is the only other board in the tender that gets involved with the IR data, if you have a similar tender you can try swapping those.

At this point I'm ready to send it to a repair station.  Do you do repairs?  or could your recommend someone I should send it to?  I live in Huntsville, AL.

Jon Henshey

George (GGG) does repairs and he's in VA, drop him a line.

I disconnected all wires from the RS/SS switch and got all my Railsounds back. 

It wasn't easy, because the short in the tender showed up again for no explained reason.  I had to pull apart the aft truck assembly and make sure nothing from the pick up rollers was touching the metal deck.  I had everything covered with electrical tape and still had a short.  I eventually got the short to go away, but I'm not exactly sure how or where it was coming from.

I test ran it last night and it was working as advertised.  Thank you all for the help with this.  I was at the end of my rope, so it was nice to get it working.  I just worry about that short reappearing, because I think that is how stuff got messed up to begin with.  I could tell, when I pulled everything apart, that someone else had tried to fix the short issue.  So, it was obviously an issue with this locomotive from the get go.

Thanks again!!

Jon

Since the RS/SS switch shorts one pin to ground to kill the Railsounds, I sounds like that lead was in contact with ground all the time.