BLI Steam Engine short problem.

CRed

Member
I just bought a BLI SF 4-8-4 with sound and DCC off of ebay a while back and it shorts out and doesn't run.It only shorts out when the drivers are on the track,the tender is fine hooked up to the engine or not.I'm running on DC with the Quantum Engineer and I just can't get it to work.My other BLI engines work fine and I have tried putting it on the same track along with one that works and it still shorts out along with the other engine.Anyone with any ideas on what's wrong and how to fix it?

Thanks,
Chris
 

CNWman

CNW Fan
Have you checked that the driveing wheels are clean? How 'bout if the wires on the inside are wired correctly/not broken?
 

CRed

Member
It's new and the driving wheels look clean to me.Not sure about whether it's wired correctly or not,but I would rather not open it up as I am not familiar with that sort of stuff.Everything looks good from the outside though so it will probably need to be opened up by someone qualified to do so.

Chris
 

Russ Bellinis

Active Member
Does it use the tender wheels for pick up? If it does, make sure the trucks didn't get turned around. BLI has a good warranty. Contact them. I don't think it makes any difference whether you bought it off Ebay or not. I don't think the SF 4-8-4s have been out long enough to get out of warranty. In any event contact them before you start trying to do repairs yourself.
 

CRed

Member
Well,it works now though I'm not exactly sure why.All I did was to take off the bottom cover and made sure the wheels were in their proper place and it worked after that.

Russ-I don't know how old it is,but it was made when they weren't allowed to use RTC and about the only thing the Quantum Engineer is good for is activating the bell and horn so it's been a while.Plus it's before they started using the "magic wand",you have to turn a small blue screw in the tender to control sound volume.

Roger-No,the QSI chip is dual mode and automatically distinguishes between DC/DCC.

Thanks for the suggestions guys.

Chris
 

CRed

Member
Hmmm,this is strange.When I tried to turn down the volume it quit working again so I wonder if maybe there is a loose wire in the tender?I fiddled with it and it works again so I don't know.

Chris
 

Kanawha

Member
I had a similar problem with my first BLI engine. Except it was definitely a problem in the tender, one of the wheelsets was installed backwards and constantly caused a short. You may want to make sure the locos pilot wheels or trailing truck arent flipped.
 
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