Proto 2000 GP30... known issues?

[diburning]

I know I might be chiming in way to late but I just got a GP-30 proto 2000 engine and my decoder was fried after about 1 minutes on the test setup track. I am about to completely tear mine down and look to see if I can see what the issue can be.

Hopefully it's a short and not the motor.

There are two big reasons why the GP30 can fry a decoder.

1. One side of the power pickup is hooked up to the frame, and the orange wire for the bottom of the motor is screwed into the frame (look near the board). If you derail and the wheels touch the frame, then you get a toasted decoder. To fix this, isolate the frame from the motor and run the orange wire to the socket, and run another wire from the pickup that was originally hooked up to the frame to the socket going to the decoder.

2. The motor may have been drawing in excess of 2 amps. Life-Like had a batch of bad motors that they have used in ALL models (although they are more common in the Alco PAs and the E-units) that draws power in excess of 2 amps which will fry most decoders.