Bryant Dunivan 111417 posted:Fully finished testing #1 last night. Not bad on what needs to be done:
1) 4 of the doors on the add on set or not operating. Flashing lights indicate fault. Motors probably on a dead spot or need of fresh lube. Will apply 9 vdc directly to motor (with wires disconnected from control board) to verify motor status. Then clean and lube all gear assemblies. Should not be too tough. Most work should be in removing the shells.
2) Dummy catenary arms not working at all. No motor noise either. When out of the box, one worked and I fiddled with the other and it started to function also. Lubed pivot points, and both now dead. I will do the motor test, and confirm suspicion that I need to swap out the catenary control board with the updated (fix) one . . .
This sounds exactly like my own experience. I'll be interested to know what you find on making the battery/motor test on doors as well as pantographs. As reported in my earlier post, my own pantograph issue was accidentally resolved by an unintentional high voltage jolt from the transformer I was using (then a Z-4000). Obviously I can't recommend that as a repair technique but after so many years in the box it would not be surprising if the motor/gear assembly was a little sticky.
FWIW, I had some correspondence with Jon Z. back in the day after I had got these sets (X-mas 2010) and on digging it out I see that I reported to him that the pantograph operation was more consistent using a CAB1 and its base station than my CAB2 setup. I've always wondered exactly how Lionel"ported" the Acela settings that are built into Legacy/CAB2 setup and whether using a pure TMCC control was better.
