# MTH Hudson Battery Replacement



## yardtrain (Feb 18, 2008)

I have to replace my rechargable battery pack in my MTH Hudson *70-3001-1 *It is the 1st run of Hudson's. The sound cuts out for a second randomly. I thought it was a broken wire, but my local dealer said it is most likely the battery going bad. I did not buy his answer as 1st. I figured that it is a broken wire/connection. So went looking for one by powering it up as usual on DCS, and wiggled wires around. The sound did not cut out at all. The battery voltage measures fine with engine off the track. So I am going to replace the battery. Has anyone had a Hudson apart?


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## Nicholas Savatgy (Dec 17, 2008)

Buy a capasitor instead of a battery the you will never have to replace bad batterys again, send a email to Ray Manley he will fix you up...he is on this forum
Nick


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## Rayman4449 (Jan 2, 2008)

Hmmm... The one time that I've seen that behavior was on my challenger and the plug at the back of the engine had it's pins break loose of the solder and was causing an unexplained sound cutting out. It could very well be that the battery is dead. How are you checking the battery voltage, probing the battery recharge terminals? If I recall, right off the charger they should read ~2.7volts. A good battery after sitting will read ~2.54volts and to me anything below 2.00 volts on a battery that's been sitting a while needs to be replaced. 

I have had my Hudson apart and it was the only one that used a battery holder that actually allowed you to replace the individual batteries without buying a pre-made (blue) battery pack. Of course in mine I just replaced them all with capacitor packs so I could eliminate that one and only maintenance item related to the system. With the age of the engine being about 4 years old it is about time that the NiCad packs go bad as that's about how long my Challenger's lasted. 

In my case with the Challenger, the sign of a dead battery was if you cut track power and the DCS board goes into the shutdown sound sequence automatically... well the sound would cut off entirely because of loss of power. 

Does yours do this? Try it out, start the engine up the cut track power and see if it plays the sound shutdown sequence to completion. If it does then you may have something else going on, but I would still replace the battery anyway for good measure as it's time.

If you need help getting it apart let us know. It's not too bad.


Raymond


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## yardtrain (Feb 18, 2008)

Yes Ray I do not buy the dead battery cause. That is why I had already looked in the Tender for a bad connection. I had also looked at the battery voltage and is was around 2.6volts or so. But I did buy a new battery and I will replace it when I open up the engine. But I still assume to find a bad wire or bad connection.


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## Rayman4449 (Jan 2, 2008)

The pins I was talking about on my Challenger are on the tender plug board at/in the back of the engine, not in the tender. You need to get the engine apart far enough to look at that board and make sure the solder around all the pins is still secure and in place. If not, then like you said look else where for a bad connection. 


Raymond


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