I installed a wired Loksound micro V5 in a late 90s P2K SD9. I wired the motor for long hood forward, 3mm LEDs and 1K resistors, and two 11x15 sugar cubes. Shoehorned the shell on and programed it. So far so good. Moving forward it hit me like a 2x4 to the back of my head. The motor works great but the headlights are reversed. And of course my wire runs do not allow for a quick swap. So I made a new harness and LED set. Why I did short hood headlights is beyond me. Its such a bonehead mistake, I’m still in shock.
My most frequent mistake is completely forgetting the resistor for the headlight LEDs. My most recent one was on a Proto 2000 2-10-2 and the LED is buried deep inside the boiler [banghead]
In your case you could have reassigned F0F and F0R and saved the hassle of rewiring. I don’t recall the exact CV values (I cheat and use a Lokprogrammer) but it is easily done.
I try to set up headlights to work independently of each other (same as it was on the big engines). And to dim, if the decoder supports it. Some decoders make this easy; others require more work. A few I’ve tried can’t seem to do it at all.
Could you use JMRI to swap the functions around? (that’s what I do). Or… change the default direction of the engine?
Believe me, I thought about remapping. I guess it’s age but I wanted it right. I took the time and effort to carve out wire channels in the weights. Bedded the wires in the channels using Locktite sticky putty and capton tape. Remapping would seem like cheating. Anyway. I still have the LEDs that can be salvaged for another install later. I still have 2 more SD9 and a GP7 to do.
Wouldn’t reversing the grey and orange motor connections have been easier? Red to grey and black to orange to mismatch the motor wiring to match the mismatched light harness?
Reversing the motor wires would have made the motor and lights match, but then everything would have been reversed - forward would be reverse and reverse would be forward. That’s easy enough to fix by changing the normal direction of travel using CV29, but many people would prefer to correct the wiring.
It’s not really boneheaded unless smoke is involved
Let me expain. I got this from my father, who was an electronics technician aboard an aircraft carrier in World War II.
When an electronic device is manufactured, the factory injects magic smoke into it. This makes it do whatever function it is designed to do. The device fails when the smoke containment magic spell fails, releasing the smoke and killing the device.
IF you have a Lokprogrammer (or Decoder Pro), I’d think you could have just changed which light does what in programming without making any physical changes to the engine. It wouldn’t have required function remapping.
It does if you want the locomotive to go in the direction of that tiny F when the throttle says forward and the other direction when it says reverse. Furthermore, its rather critical to know which direction is forward when you are consisting.
My prototype ran some of their diesels (e.g. road switchers & geeps) long hood forward so I have to add a “1” to the value of CV29 to make it operate that way. Otherwise, they are running in “REV”…even though the throttle says “FWD”.
On the PRR except for the cab units (F, E, PA, and Sharks) all the other first gen diesels ran long hood forward. Even the switchers. I think it was that way until the U boats arrived.
I wired this decoder to eliminate the usual excess wire that gets bunched up. I think the next one will be using a decoder buddy board. I have a couple of PA and PB units that could use sound.
Has anyone done any sound decoders in older Atlas RS1, RS3 or RSD4/5 units without sacrificing both weights? I have a mix of six of them. They already have mobile decoders. I also have a few Bowser/ Stewart Baldwin switchers that need rumbling devices.
I don’t think my ESU Cab Control labels the direction arrows but I forget just at the moment. So it is pretty obvious what you need to do when consisting.
Adding 1 to CV29 should fix that F and R issue though?
Even if there’s not a label, surely there’s a standard for forward and reverse, for example right forward and left reverse (some Digitrax throttles are that way, but the arrows are underneath a loco icon so it’s pretty obviuos what’s what). Otherwise, when you take control of a locomotive how can you know which direction it’s going to go? Sure, sometimes you can determine it through directional lighting, but not always.
For it to be pretty obvious, you have to know which end of the loco is the front so you know whether or not to reverse it in the consist.