Whatcha Doin'?

Conned again !   A bunch of weeks back I got suckered into a job - what a job!

This bloke had a pair of GE P42 locos in HO scale, Kato ones.  He'd had someone else try and install the sound decoders and speakers etc...  It would appear it is now my turn to try and do the job.

Unfortunately I don't have the earlier pics, but here we can see the frames AFTER I took to them with a Dremel and carved a bit out of them.

I had to make a channel at both ends to allow the wires from the speakers and the stay alive, to get to the decoder without interrupting the space required for the light guides for the head and side lights.

I still had some old double sided tape kicking around that I like to use, so this got used to stick the two speakers to the frame underneath - stops them rattling around.

Then I had to prep the Decoder, an ESU LokSound, for the wiring in of the ESU Stay Alive later on. The 3 pads at the bottom left will get the wires.

Everywhere a wire is joined and dead ended, I of course used suitable shrink tubing - tiny thingies indeed.

The Stay Alive is a 3 wire jobbie from ESU - they work nicely indeed.  The only place suitable was to double sided tape it to the rear shelf of the mech.  All wires HAD to be in between the frames to allow the light guides and loco shell to fit later on.

As mentioned, the speakers were put in using double sided tape.  There was just enough room for relevant wires to go around the speaker boxes.

Oh, and I put the 2 speakers in series since ESU decoders can do 4 ohms to 32 ohms of impedance.  Why draw too much power when there is PLENTY of noise coming out even in series.

Next, after temporarily wiring the decoder in, was to test the dang thing.  So I fired up the Decoder Pro on the PC, which uses a SPROG III in my instance.  All was good, so off to the next steps.

Tidyness - yep, that's right, tidyness.  After double sided sticking of the decoder into the space on the side of the mech, a tidy up was in order.  Keep all the wiring tidy so that the shell goes back on easily.  Also for later on, it is sooo much easier if things are tidy.   

Once the wiring was nicely in place and not going to jump out and cause a scene later on, I test fitted the lighting guides.

Then the shell got fitted... yesssss... It fitted properly.  Then another test on the Decoder Pro to make sure I hadn't buggered it and then she was ready to be boxed and will be handed to the owner later in the week.  Oh, all this has occurred in spits and spurts over the last couple of months... can't rush these things  ;-)

I need a sit down and some reading now... maybe a cuppa as well.