life expectancy of a decoder

[diesel]

I have about 20+ locos that actually have decoders in them. My question is this, If your DCC system is a bit 'off kilter' can that affect the health of the decoder? I have mostly TCS decoders. There seems to be no difference which brand is at hand.

My reason for suspecting that is this history, just to give you an idea of what's going on...

I know we have issues on many spots on the layout, when my T55 was new out of the box it ran fine in some areas and really bad in others, and some older locos that ran fine anywhere on the layout are now running really spotty on just about all parts of the layout. -happened before the 'CVP repower' as well as after see below-

The 'rewiring program' is a real slow go. Our Easy DCC system by CVP products was formerly powered by really old power packs, putting out double the needed power with transformers to reduce to about what we needed. But I have a real hard time believing that was sound. Now we have the correct CVP power units, and our problems in some areas have gotten worse, overloads ect. which is why I believe more power was going to the rail than we thought...

what do you guys think? can these conditions beat a decoder to behave badly, ie. jumpy starts, unsmooth running ect.

[diesel]

k, ya I'm hoping it's dirty track & wheels. The one other thing I forgot to mention is that years ago, when the track was installed, plumbing solder was used for many of the drops to the bus. I think a lot of the track needs to be replaced as well.

My worst runners at this point are my Atlas C30-7s & U33C. Cleaning session coming up!

[diesel]

ya, that's a good tip! I use CRC on a regular basis. But, we're in a basement of an apt building. It's a big layout ect. The only thing that works better is rail zip. That is the best. I really do think we need to replace sections of track.

I am happy to hear that the decoders are most likely ok. I was starting the math... 25 locos x $25-100 per...

[CIOR]

Pretty simple, using anything to clean the rail isn't great.

The best thing is to remove the stock, clean the wheels with ISO ALCOHOL and go from there.
Also a good vacuum program over the track will do wonders.

Like Jay said, leave RailZip off the layout PERIOD. That just attracts more gunk on the track and wheels.

As for the DCC system, as technology has moved ahead, so have the innards of the systems. Pulsing seemed to be an old problem, that we don't have anymore. chuckles...