I purchsed a DH123D (digitrax) to install in a P2K older GP9. I am concerned there may not be enough room at the top where the receiver will sit, the shell would then not sit on properly.
Is there room there or can I remove the front weight and put the receiver there?
thank you
coldles,
You could probably mill out enough of the weight to slip in the decoder. However, you’d probably lose some tractive power by doing it. Don’t remove the weight completely.
If you do hog out some of your weigth to make room for your decoder, you’ll also have to make sure your decoder is properly insulated so that it doesn’t come into contact with any metal. Sometimes that just means protecting it with electrical tape. Some decoders handle that okay, but others decoders need to “breathe”.
If room is tight, you can always go with a smaller decoder. I actually have Lenz Z-decoder (rated at 1-amp) in my P2K S1 switcher and it works just fine.
Tom
There is plenty of room in the high short hood/ The weight casting for the nose doesn’t come all the way up so you can place the decoder in the nose. If you have no problem with hard wiring, you can also take out the circut board and solder all the connections right to the decoder. You are simply by passing the factory circut board anyway using the NMRA plug. So no performance problems will be the result.
http://www.tcsdcc.com/decoderpics/p2k.html
This link shows a TCS installation in a P2K with the same chassis as your GP9. Make note of the need to change bulbs.
Thanks to those who answered. You gave me the courage, there is room and it runs beaooootiful/.
Plenty of room in there, and if you need more, just remove the P2K circuit board and hardwire the decoder. That’s how I handled a P2K SD7. I tried tracing the circuit board and found it quite convoluted when all I need is a dropping resistor to the lights, and since everything ir already done with wires (leads to the truck pickups, leads to the motor, etc) it was just as easy to remove the board. Any time the lights have to be repalced, I use LEDs, golden-white for steam and first generation diesel, the sunny white type are more appropriate to more modern sealed-beam lights.
–Randy
Just a thought, you could use a Digitrax decoder for an N or Z scale loco. All digitrax decoders are rated for 1 amp (some 1.5 amp), so you can use a smaller decoder that won"t fry.[8D]
Same with TCS. The M1s are the tiny ones and I have only used a few on very small locomotives. However I use lots of MC2s. They are a little bigger than the M1, a little smaller than the T1 and are pretty affordable at $25.
Plenty of room in my protos and I have the same chips
I took them out for now but I think they are going back in
ken