Let's do it again - Let's do it again

Tis not a double up. My last entry showed my previous QR 1720 sound decoder install for myself - this time it is the one for my mate at the club.

So my friend handed me the goodies on Wednesday and I thought I'd do the job on Wednesday night while video chatting to a bunch of QR modellers, including the famous Mr Wuiske himself!

So step 1 was to do a quick test on DC to make sure the loco actually worked. All was good with it on the DC front.

Next was to look at the decoder and speaker.  It is an ESU 58810 LokSound V5 MM Micro 8-Pin Sound Decoder which comes with a 15mm x 11mm sugarcube speaker and the sound baffle bits. There is no sound file on the decoder when bought, but I was lucky and Mr Wuiske gave me the sound file last year for this new v5 decoder and I happen to have the proper ESU Programming gear.

Now let's have a gander at where the speaker goes.  The fuel tank on the bottom of the loco is actually hollow and has a removable speaker grill - kewl bannanas.

The loco shell now comes off so we can see what we have to play with.

Looks like plenty of space in the shell above the bogie at the rear of the loco (RHS in the pic) to put the decoder.  We'll use double sided tape to stick it to the roof of the shell.

So to make it easier, we unplug the front and rear lighting boards from the main board in the loco and put the shell somewhere safe. You can see the 8pin DC board in between the two 3 pin plugs.  It will get hoisted so as to allow the DCC decoder to take its place.

So at this stage I decided to test the decoder and push the QR 1720 sound file to it while I was at it - about a 20 minute job (plus or minus).  I used an old speaker that was lying around as I wanted to work on the sugarcube speaker for the loco install at the same time.

Now, the sugarcube speaker in this decoder kit comes with a baffle kit.  I chose the smaller walls so as to fit into the fuel tank without the need to cut the tanks bottom plate.  The sound from these speakers is great, even with the smaller baffle.

Now whilst gasbagging with the mob last night I asked what glue everyone uses to put these baffles together and the overwhelming answer was - White Glue. So I got my bottle of Aquadhere out and a toothpick and carefully applied the white glue around the edges of the baffle and speaker and put them together.  A couple of track rubbers were then set on top to hold it tightly together while the glue set - only took about an hour actually.

Next was to plug the decoder into the 8 pin socket (correct orientation of course) and the addition of some double sided tape to the decoder and plonk it onto the rear inside roof of the loco shell.

On the side of the loco mech there is a channel for the speaker wires to go down, so I pushed them through and then soldered a few inches (that's 52 mm to the younger bunch) of thin wire to extend them a tad so I had something to work with.

I used double sided tape to hold the speaker into the fuel tank cavity and then carefully soldered the wires from the decoder to the speaker.

The fuel tank cover was then snapped back into place and the loco was ready for testing.

And she worked like a treat and sounded just as good.  Check it out:  https://youtu.be/HZ0eF4XznNk