VISION Big Boy Help!

Have you tried resetting it to the factory settings?

Berkshire President posted:

Have you tried resetting it to the factory settings?

Yes I've tried to do that. But since it will not respond to any command signal I am unable to reprogram it

ZHUBL  

The blinking headlight is a sign of bad antenna signal reception.

Try holding hand over both handrails if it works when in freak mode to all commands you have either a possible handrail grounded to boiler, or a wire has come loose inside the cab where it connects to end of handrail.

Another possibility is either the RCMC board and or the antenna board has failed.

Now when it freaks out will some commands work while others do not?

Try this test for me hold aux2 key for 3 seconds now try turning tender rear red lights on/off if like whistle it's acting same as mine did January of 2016.

Let me know results to above test suggestion's

What is that second to last sentence..."if like whistle" mean?

cjack posted:

What is that second to last sentence..."if like whistle" mean?

I should have clarified that!

In video it shows the whistle not always responding to the command sent from cab-2 .

so if the tender lights or any command responds same way as the whistle command then symptoms are same and not just for the whistle command.

Hopefully I answered your question

Yes, now I get it. Thanks.

I am making a geuss but probably not correct, the track may have been dirty. Try cleaning the wheels and oiling the necessary parts. Also won't I would highly recommend is contacting Lionel and ask them, they are a great help

StPaul posted:

ZHUBL  

The blinking headlight is a sign of bad antenna signal reception.

Try holding hand over both handrails if it works when in freak mode to all commands you have either a possible handrail grounded to boiler, or a wire has come loose inside the cab where it connects to end of handrail.

Another possibility is either the RCMC board and or the antenna board has failed.

Now when it freaks out will some commands work while others do not?

Try this test for me hold aux2 key for 3 seconds now try turning tender rear red lights on/off if like whistle it's acting same as mine did January of 2016.

Let me know results to above test suggestion's

I have had some ground issues before on an older engine. I don't think it is that but I'll double check tomorrow when I can and will let you know. I also feared a board might be fried…

thanks for the thoughts 

Alex Trains posted:

I am making a geuss but probably not correct, the track may have been dirty. Try cleaning the wheels and oiling the necessary parts. Also won't I would highly recommend is contacting Lionel and ask them, they are a great help

Not sure if the wheels are that dirty, they were pretty shiny last I checked, but I'll definitely double check. I was going to talk with Lionel but was too late by the time I got to it. 

Thanks for the suggestion 

I hope you didn't get smoke fluid on the main board .It right under the blowdown smoke unit filler  .. it will do some weird stuff if that board has smoke fluid on it. Very unresponsive..

I don't think so I usually try to be very careful when adding fluid. But who knows… 

There's a receiver board that slips into the RCMC driver board. It seems to me that this receiver board might have loosened up. You would have to take the shell off to see if it did. To take the shell of this engine there's two mounting screw's in the front and two in the back, once removed the top of the boiler will lift up. BUT you must be very careful there's many wires attached to the boiler, so don't lift it to high. If this board it loose, simply push it back down to reset it in place.

Alex

          SAMPLE PHOTO OF RECEIVER BOARD AND RCMC DRIVER BOARD

Thank y'all for all of your ideas I think I have narrowed it down to that radio receiver board being losses or something shorts out after warming up. I tried it today, at first everything went just fine I shut off power to reprogram the locomotive to factory settings. when I reapplied power it did as shown in the videos. After sitting for a few hours it seamed to be just fine, did a few power cycles and still ran just fine but after about 10 min. I did another power cycle and again back to the original issue. With any luck something is just loose, worse case it'll have a long cold trip from Kansas to NC for Lionel to take a look at it.

Thanks Again!

I can say the headlight sure doesn't look like bad signal, it looks like it thinks it's a MARS light.  That's a very deliberate blinking, it's programmed.  I'd second Alex's suggestion about the loose board.

In case anyone wanted to know the official problem was the RCMC. According to the service note the RCMC was shorting out and they replaced the board and did a normal 4 hour test run with no problems.

I feel your pain; I have a Big Boy that I bought in 2015 with no issues except meager blow down.  It is good to know that the main board is below the blow down fill as mentioned by JOJO (good to know so as not to overfill that).

Have you now run the Big Boy and tested it yourself on your layout?

I use a ZWL to power my layout which is supposed to have adequate circuit breaker protection for the Legacys.

Are there any thoughts from the forum on the possible power surge?? from the incident in your original post? 

RickM46 posted:

I feel your pain; I have a Big Boy that I bought in 2015 with no issues except meager blow down.  It is good to know that the main board is below the blow down fill as mentioned by JOJO (good to know so as not to overfill that).

Have you now run the Big Boy and tested it yourself on your layout?

I use a ZWL to power my layout which is supposed to have adequate circuit breaker protection for the Legacys.

Are there any thoughts from the forum on the possible power surge?? from the incident in your original post? 

Unfortunately I don't have my own full layout running yet just that small test track shown in the videos above. Between life I haven't had a chance to fully test the locomotive but a quick test last night showed it was working good.

I'm personally thinking the reason for the short has something to do with MTH. The layout I was running it on when the incident occurred is almost always MTH engines. So it's powered by a Z4000 and a TIU along with legacy. I'm thinking seeing as there was no direct short on the track but power was abruptly shut off either the Z4000 with a normal sine wave compared to all other transformers with a modified one had some sort of surge. Or a DCS signal piggybacking on the power screwed with something. But there's no exact way of knowing. 

On another note, from what I hear the ZW-L is a very good transformer and is what I plan to use for a power source when I get my layout going. 

zhubl posted:

 

I'm personally thinking the reason for the short has something to do with MTH.

Highly unlikely.........IMHO.

Hey Zach, too bad that 4014 is acting up, I was wondering if it would be able to squeeze through the O-63's on my new layout.  Hopefully it will be working well by the time you get up here to see the layout.