has anybody installed dcc decoders in athearn ac4400 & dash 9 locos?
Yes, do you have a specific question?
well how do you do it and which decoders do you use, these are the old athearn locos I’m talking about, the ones that have no circuitrary in them just the motor and the metal contact strip across the top
First, you have to electrically isolate the motor from the frame.
Next solder wires to both motor clips (carefully remove them from the motor, catching the brush springs and brushes as the fly out, then solder).
Solder wires to metal tangs on each truck that engaged the long contact strip. (and toss the contact strip)
Drill and tap the frame in a convenient location, and install an appropriate brass screw. Solder a wire to the screw.
For the light bulb, get a 5mm 30mA soft white (yellow-white) LED and a 680 ohm 1/4 watt resistor. Wire the two in series, place in a plastic tube that will be aligned with the head light lense. have two wires coming out of the tube to mate up with the decoder.
Following the instructions included with the decoder, solder the appropriate wires to the decoder.
Use a Digitrax DH123 or similar decoder.
The above is the most reliable installation method.
For a quickie, less reliable and more expensive method use a Digitrax DH123AT: http://www.digitrax.com/mobdec.htm#dh123at
The instruction above are correct for decoder installation only he left out the wire colors, this is important . The link below is to an article posted on the trains web site that will give you the placement and wire color chart. Athearns are an easy conversion.
http://www.trains.com/Content/Dynamic/Articles/000/000/002/386vdfwa.asp
He probably left them out because some decoders don’t have wires, and there may be variation in colour coding between manufacturers. Better to leave you to refer to the instructions with your specific decoder than to give you a colour code that may be wrong, with unpleasant results.
How I hate that little plume of smoke…[:I]