Hi Everyone
I have a couple of new Kato Sd40-2’s mid units with Lok Sound. I am having trouble with getting the lights to work, can anyone help me? Is it a CV issue or physical board issue? The headlights and the ditchlights both do not work.
Thanks,
CASO
Are these decoders that you installed by yourself? Kato factory-equipped sound locomotives (Kobo models) use a Digitrax SoundFX decoder.
Kato locomotives use LEDs for headlights and you may have the wiring reversed or if you didn’t use resistors in the lines you may have blown them out
The only Kato locomotives I have with ditch lights used a light pipe from the headlight LED that had to be cut out and have individual surface mount LEDs from Litchfield Station substituted.
I installed them myself, they are lok sound v3.5. Any suggestions?
Are you sure you have the headlight and ditch lights wired correctly? The blue wire is the positive voltage to all of the LEDs and the white wire is for the headlight. A resistor needs to be in one of the lines, preferably the white wire in this case.
For the ditch lights, the blue would go to both, and two other colors of wire would be used for the function inputs to make them flash; possibly yellow and green. Which two colors you would use for this depends on the decoder. A separate resistor needs to be in each of these two wires, too.
LEDs are polarity sensitive so if you connect the wires wrong they won’t work. If you don’t use the resistors, they will burn out.
What type of LEDs did you use? If they had long leads coming out the back, the longer of those leads in the positive, to which the blue wire must be connected. If you have cut the leads short, you can still tell the polarity of the LED by looking at it from the back. There should be a flat spot on one side of the LED; that’s the negative lead.
If they were surface mount LEDs, you’ll have to consult the technical specifications that came with them to determine which contact is positive and which is negative.
And then the decoder has to be programmed to activate the ditch light function. The headlight should turn on and off with the “0” function or Headlight function button on your controller.
The loksound has provisions for headlight, general lighting, running a smoke unit…etc your dcc throttle needs to be the full function capable not your EZDCC. As mentioned LEDs are polarized and will not work connected wrong, and need the resistor in series, or you might “blow” them like a 1.5 volt bulb, I think the outputs are 12 volts on the decoder.
If you have wired in your own LED and not use a resistor, well, time to replace that LED, it might be blown.
If wired in incorrectly without a resistor, the first second you turned it on, you blew the LED.
Time for a new LED, with resistor.
Just trying to make a helpful suggestion to look for the problem.
Just a guess, but is there a voltage drop light board between the Loksound board and the LEDs?
Same thing happened to my Athearn P42 locos. I plugged the loksound decoder into the 9 pin harness on the Athearn light board. Then I tested an LED hooked up to the light outputs on the Athearn board. But because the Athearn light board is limiting to 1.5 volts for bulbs, this is not enough voltage for my LEDs.
Might be your problem too, but maybe not since Kato already had LEDs on their units and your not trying to add LEDs.
The Kato had ditchlights and headlight all on the board. The headlights work, but the ditchlights will not respond. Is this a decoder issue with a CV or a volt issue with the kato board? These locos are from the sd40-2 mid production.
Thanks,
CASO