Technical

Hello,

Some months ago I bought a 'for spares or repair' A3 from AC Models.

I've rebuilt the tender, including a new heating element (courtesy of this group). This works OK with another working A3 loco I've got. But when connected to the 'spares or repair' loco, with a new superheater element, the loco just shorts out.

I'm happy to take the loco to pieces, and to do things such as testing to see where the shorting out occurs (I've got multimeters and an oscilloscope), but I don't understand enough to be able to put the loco back together again to try to make it work. There seems to be quite a lot of rolling resistance in the motion. Thanks to this group I've got (I think) all the tools and spares I might need for a rebuild, including new pistons and seals.

Can anyone help, by providing me with a sort of step-by-step set of instructions to follow? I've got a month's holiday break now from teaching here in Beijing, which gives me ample time to tackle this as a project.

Thanks to this group I've also ordered a new chimney :^)

Tim Lyon, Beijing