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.