Thought i should ask before i buy, but can a bachmann 44 ton loco with the two drive motors be upgraded to dcc? I have a couple boxcab projects and want to use the power from the bachman unit. Would i need 2 decoders for each build or would just one do it? Thanks Mike
Mike:
You need just one decoder. Make sure that you check the space available but most smaller HO, N and even Z should fit. The current draw of both motors in parallel is safe for these. However, it was my experience that as soon as I got a decoder fitted one of the drives would bind up and toast the decoder and motor. I hope you have better luck.
Joe
I’ve got 3 GE Cannonball Car shop steeplecabs that use the Twin Motor ™ setup. Yes it is possible, and with your Box cab it will have more room under the hood for a decoder than my steeplecabs do.
I haven’t had the seize up issues that Mike has had, but I do keep an extra set on standby incase. That said, A DZ is the “recommended” one for the Steeplecabs, but I did have a DN put into one. For yours a DH should work fine.
If you are putting sound in that’s another story and one I can’t answer.
I’ve found the only issue is getting the lamps lit after installing the decoder and reattaching everything.
Mike,
I would agree with Joe, you only need one decoder.I converted my two motor 44 tonner based on an article that I found on the internet which had me use the existing PCB board as a place to rewire the leads from the trucks to the leads of the decoder. I used a Digitrax decoder and chose one of the DZ models since it is the smallest available and didn’t require any body modifications. I’ll see if I can find that article.
Scott Sonntag
I did a two motor with a DZ125 decoder. TCS has a better tiny decoder I have been told.
You have to isolate both motors from the pickups. That was the tricky part. I did a hard wire. The two motor are not DCC ready. I followed an article in a older Morel Railroader magazine that has exact details. The magazine is still available. January 2001.
The two motor have a issue with a motor failure and sometimes a cracked gear.
Mine would have a brush hang up in a motor. Touch the brush with a tooth pick and the brush would seat again.
The cracked gear, I just sent it back to Bachmann and they sent me a single motor, DCC ready which now has a LokSound decoder.
Rich
I used $30 wire and Kapton tape to hold down everything. For the ever present critics, the shell covers everything quite nicely. There is plenty of slack in the wires to the pickups. The truck swivel is really not very much.
You can see the orange and gray wires going directly to the motor contacts. The red wire on the right side to the pickup. The black wire on the left to its pickup. Motors are in series. I used the loco 12 volt bulbs. They are partially in the frame so heat was not an issue.
Anothrr view.
Rich
You have to remove each truck, With a Phillips screwdriver, remove the cap from each truck. Lift the motor out. With a small pair of wire cutters, cut the pickups, leaving enough to solder the pickup wires to. This is the tricky part. The contacts are a little fragile. I scratched the surface of the pickups for bright metal and used rosin flux and silver solder paste to solder the pickup wires. I used a WLC100 solder station, 50 percent heat and a fine solder tip.
If you wire the motors incorrectly, they will push or pull against one another, depending on direction desired.
I wire mine in parallel and series which did not seem to make much difference. I left them in series. Total current I believe was around 600 ma
You will notice, the two motor and single motor frames are totally different.
Rich
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I have seen an article on turning the motor 90 degrees, and making a very nice steeple cap with a shell you can buy separately.
Rich
Thanks for all the replys. Inthink i will buy a couple cheap and throw the boxcab shell on top. Hope i dont have any gear issues as sending them to bachmann will not be in the picture since the shell will get chopped.
If you find that a motor has failed, check right at the motor contacts for resistance of the motor windings.
The first time I had a motor fail, that is what I did. I found resistance which told me the motor was fine. I think around 90 ohms. The loco ran for a while and quit again. Then I just picked at both motor brushes with a tooth pick while on the test track and suddenly the loco started to move. I suspect some who had a motor fail never tried to troubleshoot. At least they never said if they had.
The gear issue never did stop the loco, it just had a little click while running.
Rich
MIke
Not sure what your getting the older 2 motor for but you can buy a new chassis from Bachmann for $35.00, and hardwire the decoder.
http://estore.bachmanntrains.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=66_68_194&products_id=1401
How hard would it be to retrofit an older shell to a newer chassis?
Brad
Not too long ago someone did an article using an N scale DCC sound system in the 44, either in MR or on the web-only model railroad ‘magazine’ I get., can’t remember
I used a 2-function TCS decoder for N scale and it works excellent, although my little 44 is from the run Bachmann introduced a few years ago so the wiring was a LOT simpler, although fitting the wires in was a tad tricky. I love the little beast, it has been a while since I have really pulled with so maybe I will do it at the club next visit, but I know I had at least a dozen cars behind with out problems. I don’t have a set up at home so the DCC isn’t properly optimized yet. I also need to do some modeling with it, I don’t like the covered head lights, and I think a box-cab diesel body or some other non-44 body scratch build would look pretty neat on it.
Geared steam, That isba great price on a chasis, but i was going to do a retrofit like you did with yours. Seems pretty simple. I am getting a two motor one for 9.99 plus $6 shipping and watching snother one that is already dcc in it.
Can’t beat that price [:D]
By the way, welcome back Mike, good to see you posting again. [tup]
You can fit an N scale LokSound or N scale Tsunami in a single motor, HO 44 ton or 70 ton. That includes a 16mm x 35 mm speaker and baffle. I posted both here some time ago.
I did see I think in a Yahoo Group that someone did it with a two motor HO 44 ton. You just have to use your imagination on how to fit everything in.
I had to do a small amount of frame cutting in the 44 ton.
Rich
FIrst I just want to say I have the newer version with the single can motor and worm drive, so you’rs may be different. Second, I don’t know if this will work lol. I haven’t added pics yet since MR had the old forum.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thehoss/8149856615/in/photostream
if this worked right you should be looking down on the PC boards and such. If you are cutting the capacitors CHECK WHAT YOU ARE CUTTING FIRST!!! on the newer board the 4 little black ‘boxes’ right above the wiring are the capacitors, the green globs on the right are the resistors. The black and red wires on each end over the trucks are the power pick up wires, they lead to the PC board (the big green board all the wires go to). The orange and grey wires are for the motor leads, all per NMRA. IIRC the PC board circuitry controls the power that goes to the motor, the capacitors are just there to give a little boost when the trucks don’t get power. I can’t really add more than that because the model rr club I partisan runs DCC so I never bothered to really learn about DC.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thehoss/8149856329/in/photostream
Here is a close up of the wiring. The electrical tape is being used to keep the wire corraled, but it’s non conductive so that’s why I used it. I simply cut the wires from the Bachmann decoder as close as I could to the decoder to leave extra long wire, although I did trim all wires up nice and neatly. I have done a decoder before not doing this and it was a mistake. Wire got pinched and made noise, almost wrapped it around a drive shaft, ended up going back and redoing all the wiring to make it nice. Luckily because I didn’t cut the wires originally I had plenty of wire length to work with.
The little wire bundle just sits under the shell like that with out problem, but I honestly should tape them down. The lights are attached right to the PC board (which also controls lighting, another reason not to wire mot
PLEASE NOTE. The two green blobs are Inductors, not resistors.
No doubt, there are SMD type capacitors now. They will have a prefix, C.
Diodes will be a D.
Inductors will be a L
Resistors will be a R.
Rich
I can personally email pics to anyone who wants them, just pm me your email, but it may take a day or too. After reading ALL the posts I am digging back into No.44 and possibly eliminate the PC board all together. This would mean mounting lights directly to the body and creating a situation with wires ‘attached’ to the body, I can deal with it. I tried it on the club layout today but gave up with all the technical difficulties I was having, but it also wasn’t just the 44, was also having problems with my SW1500. Am loosing fan-ship and interest in Digitrax. It was a new DT402R and honestly if it was mine I would have thrown it in the garbage, even after spending 180 bucks on it. Fortunately one of the other patrons let me use his personal DT402 throttle and it turned okay.
Thanks geared. Since i got my ipad i have not posted a whole lot, especially pics. Justba pain in the butt. I have been lurking around pretty much weekly keeping up an things. The last 9 months has also been busy with house projects to get ready for our newborn kiddo. I have a ton of pics from various projects but just have not had the time to upload them to photobucket.