I want to thank all of you who have been very patient with me on this bulletin board with my numerous questions. You have all been so courteous to me.
Please help me with some information that I hope is inaccurate, but may not be. So I need to be aware of what I am dealing with if I have made a bad purchase
One of the posts stated that there were several problems with the Proto 2000 line of diesels. About ten years ago, I bought two Proto 2000 Southern GP 18 diesels at a train show. The only part that I had to replace were the bulbs in the front lights. I have not ran them in many years. They have been in the box.
What problems have you experienced with these diesels? I would appreciate any and all help. Thanks again for your help with this newbie to the hobby. [:)][:)]
The early Proto 2000 Geeps were prone to getting cracked axle gears. The locomotives will have a distinctive clicking or thumping as they run. Fortunately, they are easily replaced. Walthers was providing new wheelsets free a while back, you can e-mail their service dept. to ask. You can also replace them with Athearn gears, the trucks are identical.
I don’t have a GP18, but i do have a couple GP7s and an Alco FA/B combo. Mechanically they are nearly identical. The problem with P2K has been a tendency of their gears to crack. You will know it by the snapping sound and an intermittent hesitancy. If you place a finger atop an engine with a cracked gear you can feel it and with a little pressure it will increase. But have no fear. Walthers is very good at supporting you . They have replacement gears available at very low cost. In fact they sent me one set free! The fix is very simple. Just pry off the cover of the gearbox on the bottom of the truck, pull out the old wheelsets, drop in the new ones and replace the cover. Your engine will be running like new in less than 10 minutes.
But that was the worst case. Here’s hoping your Geep is smooth and flawless right out of the box.
If that is the same run GP18 I have I noticed they don’t take kindly to DCC conversion. Mostly in the form of annoyances like the wrong headlight coming on when selecting the unit with a throttle or not coming on at all (and yes I DID try reprogramming the CVs where appliccable). I have also noticed the intermittent hesitancy in DC mode (before decoder) has become a bit more pronounced running on DCC, but without the snapping noise of cracked gears. I have yet to determine the cause of this and am eyeing Stewart and Athearn units for something suitable to replace the entire drivetrain and motor with something that I know works, however I am open to suggestions before diving into such a drastic project.
FYI to the OP: Walthers bought out LifeLike a couple of years ago.
NS AS-416: That hesitency could still be a cracked gear even if it isn’t clicking or snapping. Just to be sure before you go to all the trouble and expense of replacing an otherwise good drive, (which would be difficult in any case), get a hold of Walthers and order those axle gears/wheel sets first.
As far as the DCC conversion, did you cut the traces on the the light board before plugging in the decoder? Did you try reversing the decoder plug?
I’ll give it a try with the axle gears/wheel sets.
As to the DCC: First decoder I used was a DH-123 with an 8 pin plug. I followed Life Like/Walther’s instructions about replacing the lamps. It then produced the results above. After trying the DH-123 plug in both orientations I switched it out for a DH-165LO circuit board replacement decoder. Still more of the same. What has me thinking it is the LL unit is that I put the DH-123 from the GP-18 in an Athearn GP-40X and that loco is running fine with absolutely no problems. Hence my thoughts on completely replacing the internal workings in the GP-18. IIRC neither decoder required cutting any traces.
The problem could be somewhere in the Proto board. Try taking it out, and wiring up the decoder the old hard way. Athearn boards are a bit better, but sometimes they fail as well. Make sure the motor is isolated from the frame.
Well I read what looks to be your problem and it could be as simple as dirty track or dirty wheels.
If that doesn’t help make sure your wires are in the right spots. I’ve heard that sometimes the Digitrax boards can cause the wrong light to go, but that is becuase of the factory wiring not being NMRA standards (or whatever). I had one that did that.
It could be the decoder too. I have one of those style decoders and the back light output don’t work. Luckily I always run this unit in a consist.
Wasn’t sure how old the unit in question was. I have some GP18s from the first run, no DCC plug of any kind. Looks like the plug/wiring might be wrong, for the headlights. The decoder working in the Athearn seems to point to that. You coiuld wire up everything to the harness that a DH123 comes with (no plug), and test to make sure everything functions properly. I have a GP60 and 2 SD60s that used DH165LO with no problems.
My next project might be a early run P2K GP9, with 8 spots on the board to solder to.
