Short verson. F2 A PK 2 brown box. Bought used with a added on DCC decoder with sound. Ran and souned great! Stock bulb burned out but still ran and souned great. K-10 trains sold me a normal blub, was dim but it still ran and souned great. Hum, must have been a Led and not a bulb.
Went on train night a local DCC expert said the problem was a 500 ohm thingie that went to the head lamp. Cut it out and the light was brighter, great problem was gone, NOT.
Got it home and the engine sounds like the old Goong Show? Plus the light does not work? Added the 500 ohm thingie and still not light and engine sounds like the Goong Show? Pull the lamp, same thing. Ran the leads of the light to the rails and is bright so blub is good.
Any ideas? Engines still runs fine, bell, horn and dyno sounds fine but idel and engine sound cut’s in and out at driffrent speeds.[soapbox][censored][banghead]
On the up side the fans works again (F2-A) and the Bachmann Dash8-40C that would not stay on the rails is pulling a drag. Guess life coould be worst?
It sounds to me like you bought a lemon. What type of “added in decoder” does it have? If it’s a SoundTraxx LC type, that’s the problem. It may not have been installed properly, or you have blown out the light circuitry on it when you removed the resistor because the bulb draws too much amperage. When the shell was removed to eliminate the resistor, a wire to the speaker may have been shorted or damaged, which is now causing the sound degredation.
I never trust a club member who thinks they know more than the manufacturer on how a specific decoder works and whether or not the headlight requires a resistor.
Try resetting the decoder to factory defaults. The engine sounds on LC’s have “notches” where they increase their level. This may have gotten messed up somehow.
I’m afraid folks may be right about the headlight. If the bulb is still working by itself, oh, wait a minute here. Was the bulb working, and they you replaced it with a LED and it didn’t work? Maybe you’ve got the leads reversed. A LED is polarized, and the blue and white leads have to be connected to the correct leads of the LED. An incandescent bulb does not work that way. It doesn’t care which wires go where.
Or, maybe you have knocked out the light function on the decoder. If you feel up to it, you can re-wire the headlight to the backup-light function instead, and then re-program the decoder to use the backup light when going forward. This may be tricky, because these decoders use some operating conventions for backup lights which aren’t as simple as “turn the light on when in reverse.” I’m assuming that your F-unit doesn’t have a backup light already.
So I’m not following the story here. Was the 500 ohm resistor taken out and the light was brighter and it was great at the club? Just not when you got it home?
I am wondering if the 500 ohm reisitor wasn’t in the lamp lead but the “common” return to the decoder (usually a blue wire). It seems strange that 1. it would effect the sound at all. 2. that it would effect the fan. 3. that putting it back in it didn’t change it back the way it was. Because of this last point my guess is that removing it, somehow, overloaded something(like a voltage regulator) in the decoder. The funny sounds are not getting the nice constant controlled voltages they are supposed to get.
Cacole, it was not a lemon, it ran and souneded great for a round 40 hours.
Zepher, I think the light that was it just burned out. It had two settings, dim and bright, I liked bright. As far as the fan, it is ran off a belt that goes to the flywheel and not DCC controled. Shell was just a little to tight.
I think I may have a cule to what happened. It was never ran on the K-10 track, just on the test track. After we got the light working I asked Ryan if he could make the engine a little louder. (I am still on the Bachmann E-Z) He fiddle with it but could not read the CV’s or gain control of them, I am still stupid about such things for now. He was pushing buttons but it was late 10:00 PM and I need to get home so told him don’t worry about the sound. Packed my stuff up and went home. It was the day latter that I tried to run the engine.
If I take a PIC of the decoder does anyone here think they could ID it?
I’m still not clear on which sound decoder you have installed.
If it is a Soundtraxx LC decoder to reset it to factory spec set CV30 to 2.
If it is an MRC set CV 125 to 1.
Put it on the track, address 03 and see if it operates properly. If the sound is still distorted you probably have a problem. Check the speaker wires. (With the Soundtraxx decoders, make sure the condenser is properly isolated.)
If your lighting problem persists the function may be blown. You can program to use the reverse light, as mentioned before, but be sure not to overload it. The manuals for Soundtraxx decoders are available at: