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Anyone know how to do this? All the smoke came out of one of mine and now it won’t run.

Not sure what chip number it was. Was running with a ghost car, change lanes and get rear ended slightly by the GC. The car stopped running and let the smoke out??? Second chip I’ve lost this week as well, although the first one kept its smoke in.

One was a year old chip that came in a new car last year. The other was a used chip I bought here on HRW. I am running 15.5 volts via a variable power supply. Could this be an issue?

Thanks

You have to collect all the smoke before you can put it back in :laughing-rolling:

There has been talk of the newer style chips not being as robust as the older style chips. I only have the old cars with older style chips and they are all run at 17V so I can't speak for the newer chips.
Dave

I had 4 or 5 failures when running some form of magnet. I've had 2 or 3 failures due to motors getting tired and pulling too much power which fried the chip. I've had the most failures due to my own fault.

Since going no-mag I've had very good luck, but yes, most all failures were the newer chips. I'm not sure if I've had an older chip go bad yet.

i've heard this can also work in a Carrera chip...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/h142hljae9u4x ... e.jpg?dl=0

I watched a video that showed the current draw of a 12 volt motor and showed how much it increased from no load (0.04 amps) to stall (0.76 amps). Magnets create down force which is a load on the motor, meaning it has to draw more current. With more current you get heat and even if a car works fine for awhile the heat buildup can damage the circuit and let the smoke out.

I would think cars sold with digital sets have been designed to operate within safe parameters, but if the magnet strength is increased or other things done that increase current draw, the safety margin is going to shrink.

It would be interesting to see measurements by someone with a Magnet Marshal and an amp meter to see how they are correlated, especially for cars with the same motor.

My learnings:

1. Work on increasing mechanical grip and decrease magnetic grip. All parts will last longer!

2. Older chips have proven more resilient

3. If you're going to solder to the chips, make sure your iron is hot enough to do the job quickly. I had my Hakko set too low and used a wrong top for the job = applied heat for too long = dead chips.

4. If #3 then use a good quality flux!!! I use a liquid version that I apply with Q-tips...turned me into a pro! (Okay, not really...but much better!).

Okay Drewbert and others- I think I want to move toward less magnetic and more mechanical grip. Presently, I trim and use just enough magnetic/mechanical grip, coupled with a different Carrera speed control setting for each car - such that 75% of the fleet traverse in 4.5-4.8 seconds. Getting out of the throttle is required only at the end of the two straights. With this set-up, I can - own my own - time one car or race two or three cars for comparison - and trim cars til I fall asleep - :)

But when family and friends come, I need lesser, more scale-like velocity and less mass to avoid damage. I'd still preferentially not want to have to get out of the throttle too much - at any place other than at the end of the two long straights. I'm guessing the best way to address this is variable voltage as discussed in other threads. You think that is the ticket?

David

You can't really use 'variable voltage' for Carrera digital- and you don't have to- that's the whole purpose of the max speed setting on each individual car. The lane changers and other digital bits won't function reliably if you cut the voltage delivered to the track to less than about 13.5 volts (track voltage is always less than what the power supply provides).

Many people use variable voltage power supplies with Carrera digital. They do so to provide better, cleaner power than the factory supply can offer, or because they want a few more amps available, or because they run D124 and D132 (factory D124 cars function best on 18 volts). But you can't drop the voltage too low. And again- you don't have to.

Okay, gotcha. So what's a good buy for a solid var voltage clean power supply?

And do I just hard splice the Carrera control unit fitting to the new power supply?