Tornado body swap - possible?

[pertinaxone]

Hi All

Been having some toruble installing TTS into my sons Tornado (from the Pullman Express set) and was wondering and weighing up costs as to buying a new TTS installed Railroad Tornado and performing a body swap (loco and tender).

Does anyone know if this is possible, so we could end up with the dark green body on the new chassis (with the TTS pre-installed)?

Thanks

Jason

[morairamike]

You don't say what is the problem. Is it the decoder or the speaker.

If it's the decide can you mountbutbinntge tender and use the small 4 pin plug socket that Hornby produce.

If it's the speaker then substitute a sugar cube for the original, if you do unsolder at the decoder and solder those two wires to the sugar cube.

[pertinaxone]

Hi

Thanks for the reply.  I had already wired in a new sugar cube speaker, tested all ok etc. All insulated, installed in the smokebox. All had been working fine until lunchtime today.  Returned to the layout after lunch. Loco would not move at all but sound still ok. Anything above a speed step too caused the controller to short out.

Taking off the body, noticed one of the black wires next to the motor was a bit melted.  Trying with the body off there were visible flashes from the motor then it shorted out again.

Tonight I've been unable to get it to do anything - no movement or sound. Does still work on DC with blanking plug in though.

 

Thanks

Jason

[Ruffnut Thorston]

Hornby advise NOT to desolder the speaker wires from the DECODER...

 

It's far safer to disconnect a TTS speaker at the SPEAKER end.

 

A hot soldering iron shouldn't be used on a decoder unless it's really necessary!

 

As to a body swap...it would depend if anything has been changed on the body.

 

Fixings, etc.

 

Someone will hopefully know, and there may be clues if the Service Sheets for the two models, if they exist, are compared.

 

 

EDIT:

I was typing this while Jason posted...

[morairamike]

Oh dear I typed my first response late then got into something else do missed edit time.

Yes the speaker should be removed from the wires not from the decoder end my post should have said. DON'T UNSOLDER at the decoder end. Sorry post is a mess will try harder next to time.

[ColinB]

First thing to do is to run the chassis with decoder and speaker alone without the body and see if it still works. From your description it sounds like you may have damaged the decoder, generally when they die, they work for a little bit either losing sound or forward/backward direction and then become a permanent short circuit. Probably and this is no insult to your abilities you shorted something out when trying to squeeze all of it into the smokebox. I did the same thing quite recently with a type 66 loco. I know people tell you not to, but put the decoder in a heat shrink sleeve, but don't heat shrink it, or heat shrink it enough to stop it falling off, but not enough that isn't any air around it. The good news is, if it is less than a year old Hornby will replace it, probably not at the moment with all the restrictions but eventually they will. If you think that the space is too small, then buy a tender bottom from a later Tornedo, Peters Spares was doing them. The tender top will still fit. Also buy the 4 pin socket to go on the tender and the corresponding 4 pin plug with lead, and put it all in the tender. Whilst you are doing all that you can also add some pickups in the tender, I bought another tender bottom from an A1 or A4 and ripped out the pickups, suprisingly the tender bottom with pickups was about £2.00. I did it to mine to give better running and surprisingly not too expensive. The replacement tender bottom  I am sure wasn't that expensive around £5.00, the most expensive bits were the lead and socket. Actually, to be quite honest the speaker connections on the decoder pcb are quite big, so the biggest worries when soldering to it are lifting the pcb tracks if you have too hot an iron, or leaving it on too long. You also have to be careful not to create shorts by letting solder drip onto the rest of the pcb. The worst bit is if you create a short between the two speaker connections, this will definitely kill the decoder, but you can also easily do this by shorting out the wires. You wll find that the speaker leads are the first to fall of the decoder if you are not very carefull handling the weight of the speaker.

[ColinB]

Reading yor post again, I would say there is a short between one of the loco pickups and the motor wires, or a motor wire occasionally touches chassis, that is the only way I can see that you would melt a wire.

[96RAF]

A tip when unsoldering a speaker is to tape it to the bench as the magnet will attract to the soldering iron tip and its very easy to ’solder’ a hole in the speaker diaphragm.

[pertinaxone]

Thanks for the replies everyone, when I get some time free from home schooling I'll have a bit more of a look into this :)

 

Jason