Now that I have verified all of the Tsunami’s functions The Tsunami does not fit inside of my Bachman Consolidation 2-8-0 HO tender. [:(] There is a circuit board in the tender which takes up too much room as do the weights. Has anyone ever installed the Tsunami in the Bachmann 2-8-0 Consolidation HO?
Thanks, Scott
Scott,
I am in the middle of doing exactly that. The Tsunami is big isn’t it??? I removed the circuit board and hard wired the decoder. I’m using a vandy tender and the space there is even tighter than the coal tender that comes with the loco. I had to remove a couple of cast on plastic posts to make the decoder fit. I used a dremel with a routing/gouging bit on it to do this.
To keep the wires straight I left a small length of them conected to the board so I could trace colors. There are two plugs in the consolidation that connect the tender to the loco. The four pin plug has motor + and - leads and the head light leads. The two pin plug has the track power right and left rails. You will have to wire the tenders’ track pick up leads to the leads coming from the loco and the proper leads from the Tsunami. You will also have to wire the back up light in the tender. There are a couple of function leads frrom the decoder you won’t use. I found that the wires took up too much space so I had to prune the heck out of the ones coming from the decoder. Be careful they don’t end up too short here. The vandy tender has a nice 3/4" almost round hole that works almost perfectly as a speaker enclosure. I have glued my speaker in and am awaiting final hook up. I also had to remove the weights in the botom of the tender to make the decoder fit. I will go back in later and add some lead shot and white glue to make up for the lost mass.
In the coal tender you may have better luck mounting the speaker face down on the floor of the tender and drilling holes in the underside for a speaker grill. Tony’s sells speaker enclosures and speakers for these purposes. There may be some links on Tony’s or other’s sites about sound installation in the consolidation coal tender Good luck with the project.
Thanks Guy. Are you saying the board that is in the tender is not needed
Scott,
Yes, I am saying that you don’t need the board for DCC operation.
Thanks. That will give me enough room to add the decoder.
Regards, Scott
Scott,
Here is a link to a post I made awhile back . I was one of the first to get the Tsunami and had to work out some programming kinks.
http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=51246
And this one on the installation in a 2-8-0 Bachmann
http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=50055
rex , thanks for that link . i’m installing a tsunami in a bachmann spectrum 4-6-0 with the small tender (3.5 inches long) . is the tender on the 2-8-0 the medium tender (4.25 inches long) ?
hopefully i’ll have mine done in a couple of days and can share photos
ereimer: Yes, it is the same tender used with the 4-8-2. Note that I used a large oval 28x40 speaker in mine under the coal load. With your smaller tender, I would think that a 1" and the decoder would work fine. Sometimes you have to argue with them and clip a little of this and that to get a fit, but it is worth the effort. I had to remove the light board, one weight plate, and clip the mounting posts off to fit both the large speaker and the decoder. No problem…I just tacked the front corners of the shell with CA glue to hold it down. Don’t be afraid to trim some of the pink shrink tube that is over the decoder to give you more room.
One thing that I did that will improve your sound 200% is go around the tender bottom’s lip that the shell fits over with two sided foam mounting tape (Duck Brand), trim to even around the lip and set the shell snuggly over it. Now you have a real good seal and the sound is outstanding. Also, don’t forget that there is a CV you can set in the Equalizer section to make a good match with the sound to the size speaker and the installation.
REX
REX
Hi Rex, thanks for the information. I did my 2-8-0 the same way you did, except pu the speaker under the coal load. Evrything so far is working. I have not tried the light yet. Did you have to put in a current limiting resistor in series with the light?
Thanks, Scott
What does the board do if you don’t need it for DCC???[?][%-)]
Scot, I didn’t have to add a resistor. I had traced it out on the old circuitry and it the light appeared to be be running direct from track power. I gave it a try with direct connection to the decoder and it works fine.
TrainFreak: The light board is what gives you directional lighting, i.e. forward/backup. The decoder takes care of all that.
One other thing to be aware of is most Bachmann light boards have a filter on them to filter out motor noise. This is a requirement in Europe. If you continue to use the light board you have to take this filter off, particularly if it is the older type filter. It can interfere with the DCC signal.
yeah i know what you mean about argueing with them to get them to fit [:)]
interesting tip about the foam tape to seal the tender . not sure i’ll have room in the small tender but i’ll give it a try . i did some tests with the 1" speaker and the difference between just the speaker attached to the bottom of the tender , and having the top of the tender installed to make a complete enclosure makes a HUGE difference in the sound
Thanks Rex, I have completely removed the board and everything is working perfect with just the Tsunami. Thanks for all of your help.[:D]
Regards, Scott
hmm i’m going to try that . i already blew up the headlight , might as well see if i can do the taillight too !
Hi, I think I just blew up the headlight as well. I had a 100 ohm in series with the white wire and heard a pop when I fired up my NCE Power Pro. My light board has some diodes on it, probably to drop the voltage by .7v, for each diode, so I guess I applied too much voltage. Now to try and figure out how to replace the headlight…or leave it dead.[:(]
Thanks, Scott
[:O][:O]
Yikes! Sorry about that! Well, you can replace it with a 14 or 16 volt and be better off without having to worry about it.
One big problem with Bachman locos is none seem to have the same wiring config or color code. My front-light wires were both yellow and by decoder color code should go to the white and blue decoder wires. Since you have a backup light, then you will use the decoder’s yellow and blue for it. You probably all ready know this, but thought I would add it for others.
It’s not too hard to replace the light.
Remove the front pilot and you will see one screw to remove.
Remove screw under Cab.
There may be another screw that I have forgotten.
You will need to pop the front boiler plate off (gently) by using a sharp edged hobby knife, being careful not to scratch it. Kind of work it out.
The light wire runs down the weight, so you will have to loosen it to get the light’s wire out and replaced. Be careful not to pinch wire when replacing.
REX
[:)]
Hi Rex, My Loco does not have a backup light. Yeah yore right about the diode drop. I see 2 in series with a 120 ohm resistor, so the drop would only be 1.4 v plus some current limiting. Thanks for the information on the headlight replacement. The good nes is I know which wire goes to the headlight now. [:)]I assume I can get the bulb from Tony’s or even my local dealer here in town. Just need to make sure it’s the right dimension to fit in that tiny location. I sent Bachmann an email asking for the board schematic, but it’s simple enough to make my own from the board.
Thanks, Scott
High frequency audio is uni-directional, whereas lower bass frequencies are omni-directional. Any fluctuations in air pressure from the back of a speaker will be directly opposite in phase to those from the front of the speaker, and will cancel them out.
Since bass is omnidirectional, much more of it gets around from the back of the speaker, and much more of it get’s cancelled out when you don’t have the speaker in a sealed enclosure. (“Sealed” is good enough for my purpose here, tuned ports are beyond the scope of the discussion at hand.)
If you want to see what a speaker sounds like without an enclosure, run the signal through a graphic EQ, boost everything 12 db (all the way up) above 1 khz, and cut everything below 1 khz.
Speakers need boxes, without them, they sound like transistor radios, only worse.
Scott: I laid down to go to sleep, but I got to thinking about the diodes and remembered that there was something strange about the way they were wired in my 4-8-2. I don’t have a light board around, but I was wondering if they may have picked up two diodes in series and paralleled it to the lamp for 1.5. Of course that doesn’t explain the resistor unless they formed a voltage divider and was using it for current limiting. I know my 2-8-0 didn’t have a resistor and went through the diodes only, but the 4-8-2 did. But anyhow, i just use a Minitronics 16 volt lamp for my locos when I need one and that is what I placed in the 4-8-2. Sorry I don’t remember the size, but it is small.
I have also found out that there are wiring differences by production runs of the 2-8-0. Nice of them, huh!
Finished my install of a Tsunami in a 2-8-0 with a short vandy tender. Was a bit of a slog but mainly due to my inexperience and some bad luck. I was too aggressive removing insulation from the tender wires and managed to pull one off of the back of the plug between the tender and the loco. Oops!!! I discovered this late in the game and had to dis-assemble the whole unit to re-solder Used some old silicone seal that didn’t set up to glue in the speaker. Had to clean that mess up and re-glue.
The thing is in now and it sounds very good. I didn’t need resistors on my head light or back up light. I used the tender’s box end as a speaker enclosure and found that a 3/4" speaker fit perfectly inside the cylindrical part pointed into the box end and sealed around the edges with silicone caulk and hot glue. I have drilled a few holes in the box end for better sound. I will be drilling a lot more.
This decoder has a variety of really cool functions that I have just begun to explore. There is a brake that will slow the train down like a real brake will and then the train will slowly creep back up to original speed. This could be fun on a hill or coming into town. There is a load compensation feature that changes the sound of the chuff as the train goes under load up a hill or as it accelerates and deccelerates. This really makes the sound come alive. There is a water stop sound. You can pull up to the tank spout and hit the key for the water stop. Cool!!! A whole slew of other sounds that can be set to come on automatically or mapped to a function key. Fully adjustable BEMF. A fully adjustable audio mixer and reverb settings.
The sounds are very good and the clarity is great. I am not geting a huge amount of sound out of the decoder because of the small speaker that I was forced to install but it still is plenty loud. I re-mapped some of the functions because I didn’t use either of the extra functions on the decoder.
The manual is a long downl