I recently received a P2K Alco S1 locomotive.
I know in the past I have seen some discussions about an electrical problem with this loco, at least with repsect to decoder installation for a Digitrax DH163LO. I searched but coud not find anything with the search criteria I entered.
Can someone review what the actual problem is.
The headlight (at least the long-hood one) is mounted using a common frame ground. I think the motor is isolated, but I’m not sure. (I put a decoder in mine last year.) I removed the original light and wired a LED (with my own resistor) directly to the decoder.
A couple of weeks ago I got sick of the wimpy headlight on the cab end, so I took the whole thing apart. They mounted an incandescent grain-of-wheat bulb inside the hood, and routed the light using one of those plastic light-guides. I removed that and put a LED into the top of the cab, shining directly out. Then I turned out the lights and switched coal hoppers around for a couple of hours.
KKEIFE,
Despite the fact Proto originally designated their S1 as “DCC-ready”, it really isn’t. What you need to do is first isolate the motor from the frame before installing the decoder. Randy (rrinker) has a very nice tutorial (with pictures) how to perform this conversion. Here’s the direct link:
http://community.webshots.com/album/163958178NgaXTy
(…and he even uses the DH163LO in the tutorial.)
Despite that issue, it’s one of my best running locomotives. [tup]
Tom
This may be a “dumb” question but…
Do replace the orange wire that comes with the locomotive with the orange wire that Randy added in the tutorial?
KKEIFE,
I used a spare piece of orange wire that I had laying around to isolate the motor. It’s definitely a larger gauge than the one that comes with the locomotive but not too much large, so as to be stiff.
Tom
I used what I had around. And what I had around at the time was some Cat5 network cable, specifically a patch cord with the more flexble stranded wire (in-wall wiring tends to be solid conductor). Conveniently a typical network cable has one pair that is orange and orange/white - voila, instant orange wire.
I have a second oen to do now, and for this one I will use some spare orange decoder wire - after installing bunched of decoders that require wiring instead of just pluggin in, I have lots of various colors of wire left over.
I do not know that I’d use a DH163LO again, It made it easy in one respect that the bulbs do not have to be changed, but I did have to grind off some of the frame to make it fit (used alarge file - not even the Dremel on that one). I’ll probably pick a smaller decoder and swap the light bulbs for LEDs.
–Randy
What I meant by the question above is: To what do you attach the orange wire that was soldered to the brush cap?
Does it go where the orange wire that was disconnected from the DCC socket go? And if so what do you do with the orange wire that was in there originally?
KKEIFE,
Okay. The orange (motor) wire that you’ve soldered to the underside of the motor will now be soldered to the orange wire coming off the decoder. Does that clear things up? [:)] The other gray (motor) wire and the red and black (track) wires are soldered to the decoder the same way. All that’s left to do after than is to hook up the lighting.
Randy did a terrific job putting this tutorial together. It was my very first decoder install and I had no mishaps. I also replaced the incandescent headlight for a golden-white LED. Tons better.
Tom
So the two orange wires are soldered together and put back where the original orange wire was disconnected from?
KKEIFE,
You can basically toss the 8-pin DCC socket if you want and hard wire everything right to the decoder - wire for wire. (Just make sure you insulate the connections with either heat shrink or electrical tape so that they don’t touch metal.) That’s what I did and I used a smaller decoder so I didn’t have to mill out any of the frame. Is it clear as mud yet? [:)]
Tom
The stock orange wire connects to the DCC socket circuit board, and then has a little ring terminal that is screwed to the frame. Th ebottom brush of the motor has a little brass (or something) tab that presses against the frame when the whole thing is assembled.
The NEW orange wire completely replaces the old one and goes from the brush cap (and you remove the brass tab that touches the frame - be careful when removing the brush cap, there is a spring inside and if you lose that, the motor won’t work) to the tab on the circuit board where the old orange wire was connected. That’s assuming you are going to install a decoder that plugs into the socket. If you are hard-wiring a decoder, simply attach the orange wire from the decoder to the bottom brush cap, no need to install one length of orange wire from the motor and then splice it to the orange wire coming from the decoder.
–Randy