ModelRailroadForums.com is a free Model Railroad Discussion Forum and photo gallery. We cover all scales and sizes of model railroads. Online since 2002, it's one of the oldest and largest model railroad forums on the web. Whether you're a master model railroader or just getting started, you'll find something of interest here.
I have 4 Tam Valley Depot Hex Frog Juicers. All my turnouts are Peco Electrofrogs. I have an Ho layout powered by NCE SB5 booster.
The frog juicers are driving me nuts. I am getting very inconsistent powering of the frogs. I watched the installment of modifying the peco turnout and
installing the frog juicers and followed his method. The problem is the frog is not energized in the direction of the turnout. This happens when entering the turnout from either direction.
The loco gets to the frog and just stops. I check the voltage and the opposite side of the frog is energized.
I am 82 and just about ready to quit model railroading because of the frustration involved. Does anyone have any ideas to help solve my problem?
I wish I could help. I have and use one of those for Tillig narrow gauge turnouts, but I've never had any troubles with it. It works as designed, and works very well.
Have you tried flipping the two phases of the DCC wire with each other? There's an A and B phase and if they are reversed compared to the Juicer outputs, it might do what you're experiencing. Similarly, if you have the Juicer outputs swapped, it may cause the same thing. Try one or the other, but not both at the same time. Just guessing ...
I did try reversing the feed but it made no difference. What did work was using a mono frog juicer on the 2 most problem turnouts. I have 2 mono frog juicers I intended for an extension on my layout. This not ideal as I will need to replace the 2 mono frog juicers. Thanks for the responses.
There is no phasing of the juicer as the point of it is to reverse the feed to the frog anyway. What video did you watch? We have those juicers all over our club layout without issue. To have four that are bad would be very surprising.
I have 4 Tam Valley Depot Hex Frog Juicers. All my turnouts are Peco Electrofrogs. I have an Ho layout powered by NCE SB5 booster.
The frog juicers are driving me nuts. I am getting very inconsistent powering of the frogs. I watched the installment of modifying the peco turnout and
installing the frog juicers and followed his method. The problem is the frog is not energized in the direction of the turnout. This happens when entering the turnout from either direction.
The loco gets to the frog and just stops. I check the voltage and the opposite side of the frog is energized.
I am 82 and just about ready to quit model railroading because of the frustration involved. Does anyone have any ideas to help solve my problem?
Boy, I sure do share your frustration. I have been fiddling for hours to get this Mono Frog Juicer to work to no avail. It will NOT change priority when I drag a locomotive through the siding turnout. Straight through the turnout, the LED turns and/or stays green. But when I drag the loco through the turnout slowly, the power cuts out, I can hear the short sizzle, and the LED on the frog juicer goes out. Once I pull her through the frog, the power comes back to the loco once again.
To try to isolate, I ran a single, solo, power line from the dcc power source directly to the frog. As an extra precaution, I took the one short circuit board I had on the hub out as well, and spliced the power directly. My DCC power station is an NCE Power Pro.
Frustrated beyond frustrated because this looks so simple, yet I've failed after messing with it for hours.
In a case like this, I would make certain that a wheel tread is not shorting the frog.
I have a couple of locomotive that do this and I fixed it by applying clear nail polish at the rail about 2mm ahead of the frog. It stopped the problem immediately.
In a case like this, I would make certain that a wheel tread is not shorting the frog.
I have a couple of locomotive that do this and I fixed it by applying clear nail polish at the rail about 2mm ahead of the frog. It stopped the problem immediately.
Hi to all I have a fix for the Peco switches. This frustrated me, too, and cost me over $150 trying different Peco switches (insulfrog, electrofrog, unifrog). The main issue is that the power routing does not work if even a tiny bit of track fuzz gets into the switch point rails. So, what I do is solder tiny wires (like from an ESU wired decoder) from the main rails to each of the switch point rails from underneath, feeding the wires in grooves melted into the ties so everything is flat. Then, beyond the frog rails on the two track side I put insulators on both of the interior rails. No shorts, no DCC problems and the Peco switches work correctly- unless you get a piece of ballast lodged in the points. This is a picture of a curved Peco switch, driven by a servo under the table. The main feeds are the red and black wires. The fine wires in the center are the connections to the mains.
I experimented with some duct tape on this concept and got it to work! Then I purchased a new locomotive that I wanted anyway, and it worked fine without the tape. So it was indeed a symptom of that one loco that I was using. Thanks for the guidance!
