Help needed with my Tornado

[Nightrain]

Would like some advice, fitted a sound chip to my OO gauge Tornado, ran for 10 minutes then a shower of sparks. Motor totally dead. What could have happened?

[ColinB]

Well the favourite is the sound chip has died. Easy thing to do is remove the sound chip and see if it works on DC. If it has died after 10 minutes, it seems a bit unusual but if it is a TTS decoder then not a surprise. The other thing to check is the capacitor across the motor they sometimes go short circuit taking the decoder with it. If it is a TTS decoder it is guaranteed for a year so either return it to who you bought it off or Hornby.

[RDS]

@Anthony

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[Chrissaf]

Either the motor or the decoder or both have gone belly up. You will need to perform some basic diagnostics to see what is what and what your options are.

Firstly remove the decoder and return the loco to its previous DC operation state. Refitting the decoder socket blanking plate if the loco was a 'DCC Ready' one.

Does it run on DC, if so, then the fault may just be with the decoder.

If it doesn't run on DC, then test the motor windings for a burn out. Best way to do that is with a multimeter set on the resistance Ohms scale. Measure across the motor connections as you slowly rotate the motor shaft manually. You are looking for a resistance that is typically between 30 and 120 Ohms. If the motor is faulty then one or more of the windings might be open circuit or short circuit. As you rotate the motor shaft, expect to see fluctuations in the meter readings. Assume that there are 5 individual motor windings, therefore you should see five similar meter reading values as you rotate the shaft possibly separated by very small open circuit dead spots or possibly very small rotation spots where the readings are about half the normal observed measured values. Either way you should observe a number of rotation positions where the readings are steady and of a consistent valid value.

If the motor itself is OK and spins when connected directly to a 9 volt battery (with wires to the motor removed), then look for an open or short circuit in the loco wiring between the wheel pickups and the motor.

If no fault can be found with the loco motor and wiring then it looks like the decoder is faulty. You say it is a sound one. If this means that it is a Hornby TTS decoder, then faults of this nature are common on them. If the diagnostic checks indicate a decoder fault, then replace the decoder with a new one, having first proved that there is no fault still in the loco (else the replacement decoder may be damaged at next power up).

Edit: As Colin states in the previous reply, if a TTS decoder then the speaker may have gone short circuit (another common TTS fault) or possibly the motor suppression capacitor (this can be safely removed and discarded without replacement as not really needed these days with modern TVs and Radios).

Not got a multimeter, then purchase one via eBay for less than £8 delivered.

Personally I would also invest in an ESU decoder tester. I have one, and it is invaluable and not that expensive.

Your reference to "a shower of sparks" could indicate that the loco picked up some metal debris from the track that short circuited the decoder.

As this is your first post and my reply is a long one. Please do not click the blue button with the white arrow. This is not a "Reply to this post" button. To reply, scroll down to the 'Reply to this post' text box, write your reply in it and click the green "Post Reply" button.

[Nightrain]

Thank you for all your advice .Tornado ended up needing a new motor. Sound chip and motor totally dead .

[ColinB]

I don't know if you did but you should have changed the motor to a 5 pole one, if it had failed. I used the Pendolino one, it is a lot cheaper that the standard Tornedo motor and better. You need to remove the twin brass worm drives and replace them with the worm drive and flywheel from your old loco, but it runs much better. It sounds like the motor died and took the sound unit with it. One thing I have noticed is that the Hornby motors have an internal wire spring inside to keep the motor magnets away from the rotor. On two of my new motors this had fell out jamming the motor. Easy to fix if you know it has happened, you can tell by the shaft not rotating smoothly.