Looks doable, and I can handle all of the DCC and electrical hookups, but milling the frame will be tough since I have little to no power tools (just a drill and a saber saw). And I’d like these locos to end up looking nice. Not a hacked up frame.
Does anyone here know of a service that re-motors locomotives? Maybe someone in Southern California who does this service? I live in Anaheim.
Another option is buying later run chassis and just swapping the shells. That’s what I did with mine. Makes for a clean install and might be more cost effective than re-motoring. It’ll certainly be easier.
Easiest thing to do, test them and see if they are the power hogs. It was only very few had that problem, plus Life Like had a replacement program so if they were not purchased new they might have already been fixed. Even the cheapy Harbod Freight multimeter has a 10 amp range which will suffice, wire it in series with the track power from a DC power pack, runthe loco with the shell off, and grab the flywheel and take note of the amp reading. If it’s below the Tsunami limit, you’re all set.
There have been many runs of PAs, and only a few had the defective motor. Well, not defective, it ran fine, just inappropriate I suppose. Find some unwanted road name on eBay from a diffeent run, swap shells, resell old one. I’ve done the same with an Athearn RS-3, mine didn;t run worth a darn, poor power pickup even after soldering wires to bypass the bolster contacts. So i found another for under $20 in a road name I didn;t care about, swapped chassis and now the one I want runs great. I haven’t sold off the unwanted one just yet, I need to try some more extreme measures to improve th epickup, plus the shell is the right details I need so I might just strip it and repaint. Can never have too many RS3’s.
Before you ‘fix’ them, I’d make sure they’re broken. If the engines run OK on DC they probably will do fine in DCC. Non-sound decoders aren’t all that expensive, why not convert one of the engines to DCC with a non-sound decoder and see what happens?? If it works fine with a regular 1 amp decoder, it should work fine with a 1-amp sound decoder. I don’t have a Proto PA but I have pre-Walthers Proto E-units and FM “Erie-builts” and haven’t had any issues with DCC decoders with any of them.
$5 for a harbor freight multimeter will possible save a $15 motor only decoder, not to mention a $100 sound decoder, so testing first is still the best bet. It’s a well publicized issue but it really only affect a small range of models. Like most things on the internet, the problem has grown bigger with the telling. Plus, the defective uints were PA’s not E’s: http://loystoys.com/info/ll-ho-diesel-decoder-selection.html Scroll down to the PA entry.
One annoying thing that makes this harder then it ought to be is that Walters did away with the old history section that Life Liek had, which had the release dates of all the older runs. Walthers now only seems to list what they’ve done since buying them out. The easiest thing is what was previously mentioned - find some unwanted road names of a different run on eBay and swap shells. You cna even get ones with damaged shells, so long as the motor is good and it’s from a run OTHER than the one that had the high amp motors. Probably the easiest and cheapest fix. The alternative is a repalcement motor from someone else, which may or may not require additional work to get installed and will almost certainly be more expensive but probably run even better than the stock motors. They key to the eBay deal is making sure you’re getting the correct ones, the old history site listed road names and numbers so you could validate someone saying their model is from say the second run and not the first - although there is always the chance of some unscrupulous seller doign the shell swap then sellign the newer shell with older chassis and not mentioning that fact, but that sort of danger exists with anythign on eBay
Contact Walthers directly. I did, along with some verifyable proof from a few online links to the problem, and they sent me two new motors free of charge !