Whadjacallit - Powerpack, Stay Alive, Current Keeper...

OK, since last time, I've whacked a few more of these super capacitor based thingamebobs into my HOn3½ QR locos - the 2400 class this time.  These have the same chassis and mech as the 1550's and 2100 classes as well.  So my previous knowledge, or lack thereof, is of use.

After doing a 2100 for a mate from the club using my patented and pending box kite method, see my last blog post, 

See, it looks like a box kite - I reckon so any way.

The box kite installs into the mechs' tower.

I was about to add one of these stay alives into a 2400 class of mine when it hit me - like a low hanging beam under a Queenslander, boom! Sometimes you can't see it even when it is inches from your face - beams about to hit you and locations to install things...

Of all things, I was so engrossed in the centre of the loco where the decoder was, the motor etc, that I didn't look at the farrrr end.  Yep, the front end.  In the loco shell, just above the coupler box and in front of the drivers cab, there is this space - looks small.  But it's not small, it's juuuust right.  Just right for an ESU single cell Powerpack, or Stay Alive, or Current Keeper, or whatever you want to call these little battery type gizzmos.

So that's where this last one has been shoe horned. Lots less hassle and work :-)   I did of course attach a small three pin set of plugs to the Stay Alive and Decoder so that it is not permanently connected to the decoder - just in case of future work on the decoder.

I only needed a tiny bit of double sided tape to hold the stay alive in place and then to keep the wires tidy, I used a small drop of Glue that is set with a bit of UV light.

A small drop on the cab base holds the three wires in place (above). And then another small drop half way to the decoder (see below) keeps it tidy and makes putting the shell back on a bit easier.

So that's eleven QR's in the fleet done - one more and I have a carton done.

Oh, and I reckon if you wanted MORE, I hear Tim the Toolman in the background, you could squeeze a home made stay alive in there with one cell in the front, two in the area where I did the box kite and depending on the decoder used, one next to the decoder...  4 cells works nicely, but just make sure for big programming jobs to disconnect your homemade jobbie from the decoder while programming - stops possible damage since there is no ESU circuit in place (comes with their own brand stay alives).

Now this loco will smoothly charge over points and dirty spots here and there :-)

Ah, ha, ha, ha, Stayin' Alive, Stayin' Alive

 

Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother

You're stayin' alive, stayin' alive

Feel the city breakin' and everybody shakin'

And we're stayin' alive, stayin' alive

Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive, stayin' alive

Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive

Ah, ha, ha, the Bee Gees. Anywho, since I was looking at how to install a Stay Alive in a 2100 class QR loco for a friend, he's decided we'll do the install on Saturday before the NMRA meeting up the road.  Crikey, I better get prepared ASAP!

So I already have a new ESU Stay Alive on hand, so he can give me his and I'll give him mine - see photo above.  It is of course an ESU PowerPack Mini 54671.  

So I thought about the four ways I came up with on how to install one in the 2100 loco (see last blog entry) and decided the box kite method will be the jobbie.  While I was at it, I thought I'd open up my 1550 class QR loco made by that Wuiske mob, as the Stay Alive I put in it a year or two back has stopped working and since they are the same mech as the 2100, I could get prepared for the weekend as well as fix a problem if I had one.

Well, bugger me dead if I hadn't accidently cut a wire from the Stay Alive to the Decoder when I had assembled the loco last time I had it apart - had put a screw right through a wire and severed it - dead as an XPT on a mates layout - kaput.

So I soldered on a new wire and got it ready to put back in the box kite I had made last time.

Now that I had the old box kite out, OK, it's not a kite but sort of looks like one.  It is some 5 and 10 thou styrene sheet glued together to sit in the tower on the loco mech and hold the Stay Alive bits in place and stop them falling down into the mech itself.  Below is a pic of the old one with the Stay Alive's super capacitor in place.

And these 2 shots show the new one being built in preparation for installation in my mates loco this weekend.

Next we plonk the box kite in position to make sure it fits.  Looks good to me.  No glue will be needed.

Now. Now we modify the Stay Alive a tad.  My last one as you saw above had wires between the Stay Alive's circuit board and its super capacitor.  This time I just cut the heat shrink off and bent the super capacitor out by 180 degrees and wrapped some kapton tape around it for electrical protection.

The next shot shows the Stay Alive bent into position.

Here it is with kapton tape on it and ready to go flying - Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive, stayin' alive.

And here we see a test fit of the Stay Alive in the box kite in the mech's tower. Looks like it will do the job nicely.

For future ease of maintenance I also soldered on a small three wire plug to the Stay Alive so it can be disconnected from the Decoder whenever needed.  See below.

Now to wait till Saturday and all that will be needed is to open up the loco and solder the matching 3 pin plug to the Decoder and test her out.

I'll Keep You Alive

A fellow QR modeller asked me the other day about fitting a Stay Alive (or Keep Alive - what's in a name) in a Wuiske brand of QR 2100 loco, in HO scale.

So some research with my loco was in order and then eventually I decided to progress and whack a Stay Alive in my QR 2100 loco.  My plan is to have all my QR locos with stay alives to cater for dirty track and poor trackwork that you sometimes come across on some layouts...  Not that my wheels would EVER be dirty... no, never...  ;-)

Step one was to rip the loco's shell off - carefully. Crikey that bench of mine is getting messy again!  QR locos are so narrow and not too tall either - not much room I'm afraid.  And this loco has two parts of sweet FA space to play with.

Above you see the shell off, but when it sits on the mech, there's not much space free in there.

I proceeded to see where I could plonk a Stay Alive.  It turned out there's no room for a home made one, be it a five or a four cell version.  So I got the measurements for the ESU single cell Stay Alive - they call it a PowerPack, from the ESU website via a google search (careful what you search for...) and I proceeded to see if it would fit.  Bugger - nothing suitable without cutting or grinding the mech.

Don't know what made me look, but I did and found that the google search had given me the OLD measurements for the OLD version of the ESU PowerPack.  So with the new dimensions now on hand for the ESU 54671 PowerPack I recompared the spaces.  Here is the little Stay Alive itself.  There is a circuit board that does circuit type stuff with the electricity and there is a single super capacitor soldered to it.  It is 15.7 mm x 9.7 mm x 13 mm in size.

I found four possible sites or ways to install the Stay Alive - only one needed any filing or cutting.

The above photo shows the Stay Alive sitting in the mech tower.  It is a smidge too big on the circuit board so would not fit down low enough.  But I reckon a small amount of filing or grinding of the tower would allow it to fit nicely.

The above shot shows the rear end of the shell with the decoder, an ESU Micro, double sided taped to the inner roof. This space is suitable. You see, the yellow box I drew, well the decoder and Stay Alive will fit within that and will be below the height limit posed by the shell mounting post - pointed to by the red arrow.  This will be the method I use.

Another option I reckon is to use the mech tower, but modify the Stay Alive.  I haven't modified it in the above shot, but the yellow outline shows where the circuit board would be.  You see, the super capacitor part of the Stay Alive will fit in the tower. Now if we were to cut the heat shrink off the device and bend the circuit board 180 degrees out, it would sit in the space on the left of the tower - voila.

In the above shot you can see the Stay Alive on its side and on an angle sitting between the mech tower and the decoder plug area.  You just need to make sure it doesn't cover the screw hole that the loco shell uses.  Maybe even a piece of sheet styrene to make a plate for it to sit on and keep it from dropping down into the mech.

So I proceeded with installing the Stay Alive in the same area as the  decoder.  Now as per the photo above, this is the area above the loco I have to play with.  The yellow circle marks where I must stay clear to allow the shell screw to come through.

First up we need to solder the three wires from the Stay Alive to the Decoder.  I had to cut a bit of heat shrink carefully off of the Decoder first to expose the three solder pads where the wires will go.  Two pads are currently unused - easy peasy.  The one on the other side though, is used as the common for the circuit.  So there is already a wire soldered there - see the first of the two shots above.  

So careful careful when I solder.

The above two shots show that I needed to add some double sided tape to the Decoder and Stay Alive so I could position them in the shell so they wouldn't get out of position when the shell is put back on.

Above, we can see them now in place - noice one PK, I says to meself.

Above, the shell is loosely in place so I can test the loco to make sure that (1) she still works and that (2) the Stay Alive works.  I fired her up and all was good with the work :-)  She moves and also goes toot toot, and even does it for a few seconds when lifted off the track now.

Above, she is all screwed together and ready to run.

I won't talk about the 15 minutes or so poking around positioning wires and swearing a lot to get it all fitted in.  Maybe a hot glue drop here and there next time to hold wires out of the way might be the go :-)