I just received my Dallee E-Unit today but I cannot figure out how to wire it up to my PW locomotive with dual Pullmor motors. I am limited to my knowledge when it comes to electricity. They talk about a field in the instructions but call me dumb I don't know what that means. If anyone has pics of this wired up to a Dual motor locomotive please post in your reply. I have the locomotive hooked up with a rectifier right now for running the loco in forward. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Kev
Can't stop working on the railroad!
The field winding is the winding that you can see from the outside of the motor. One end of it is soldered to the motor frame. The other end is probably connected to the middle one of the three terminals on the motor brushplate. That terminal is probably what the instructions are referring to. The field terminals of the two motors should be connected together, usually through the middle conductor of a three-conductor ribbon cable.
The other two terminals connect to the brushes. They should also be connected together between the motors; but the left-hand brush of one motor should probably be connected to the right-hand brush of the other motor, and vice-versa.
With the motors wire together in this way, the connections to your e-unit can be made as if there were only one motor involved. I don't know about your electronic e-unit; but with a (late-model) Lionel electromechanical e-unit, the green wire goes to the field terminal, the yellow and blue wires go to the brushes, and the red wire goes to the pickup. There is also a connection to the locomotive frame; but that is made through the mounting of the e-unit frame to the locomotive frame, not with a wire.
Bob Nelson
Bob I undestand where to connect the brushes now but what has me confused is that there are black, yellow, and orange wires. If I am looking at this correctly the black wire from the e-unit goes to the solder point on the motor and the yellow wire goes to the middle solder point between the brushes. The orange wire is what is confusing me. My motor looks like the pick on the left in the PDF except I have no wire on the top where that green one is. I connected the orange one the a ground on the frame. The locomotivelunged forward when power was applied but stopped. That is all I tried as I didn't want to burn anything up. Do you have anymore advice.
http://www.dallee.com/PDFs/Sample%20Installations/EUnit%20diesel%20wiring%20help.pdf
It appears that the Dallee wire colors have no relationship to the traditional Lionel colors.
Connect the Dallee red and brown wires to the brushes. It doesn't matter which one goes to which brush, as long as the left-side brushes of the two motors are connected together and the right-side brushes are connected together. (I got this backwards in my posting above.)
Connect the Dallee yellow wire to the end of the field winding that is soldered to the middle motor terminal. The other end is soldered to a terminal connected to the motor frame. Unsolder that connection and then connect the field wire to the Dallee orange wire. (You can swap the yellow and orange wires if that is more convenient for any reason, as long as you wire both motors the same way.)
Connect the Dallee blue wire to the pickup(s). Connect the Dallee black wire to the locomotive frame.
Unfortunately, the labels for the wires in the photographs do not match the colors of the wires. In particular, a green wire is labeled "orange". I don't understand why this would be.
Call them they are always helpful.
On the Dallee eunits I have installed you must remove the field wire(s) from ground and hook them to the eunit.
"IT's GOOD TO BE THE KING",by Mel Brooks
Charter Member- Tardis Train Crew (TTC) - Detroit3railers- Detroit Historical society Glancy Modular trains- Charter member BTTS
Thank you Bob, So I need to wire the eunit to both motors not just one. The instruction are not very good on their site. It has no mention that you need to wire both motors separately. I just hope I didn't burn up the unit when I hooked it up wrong.
If I am understanding this correctly you are saying to remove the wire from the field and the motor and connect the yellow and orange wires where the grounded wires used to be attached on each motor?
First of all, connect both motors in parallel. That is, connect the left brush of one motor to the left brush of the other. Connect the right brush of one motor to the right brush of the other. Connect the field terminal on the brushplate of one motor to the same terminal on the other motor. This is the same way the motors were wired originally, probably with a three-wire ribbon cable.
On each motor, the other end of the field wire is soldered to a terminal on the motor frame. Disconnect that wire on each motor. Connect the field wire that you disconnected on one motor to the field wire that you disconnected on the other motor. Now you have four wires connecting four points between the two motors.
Now wire the Dallee unit to the motors. Each Dallee wire can go to whichever motor is more convenient, but it doesn't have to go to both, since they are already connected together by the four wires just described. Connect the orange wire to one of the the wires that you disconnected from the motor frames (which remains connected to the wire that you disconnected from the other motor frame). Connect the yellow wire to the field terminal on one of the brushplates (which remains connected to the field terminal on the other brushplate). You can swap the yellow and orange wires if that makes the wiring more convenient for you.
Connect the red wire to one brush of one motor (which remains connected to the same-side brush of the other motor). Connect the brown wire to the other brush of either motor (which remains connected to the same-side brush of the other motor). You can swap the red and brown wire if that makes the wiring more convenient for you.
Connect the blue wire to the pickup(s). Connect the black wire to the locomotive frame at any convenient point. You can use one of the terminals from which you earlier disconnected a field wire for this connection if you like; but it might be better to find a point on the main locomotive frame where the wire will not be flexed as the train runs.
Actually, most times the the motors rotate in opposite directions as the truck on one end is reversed from the other end. So, the motors won't be exactly parallel, you'll want the brush connections reversed to the two motors.
Connecting both left-side brushes together and both right-side brushes together should do this, since the motors themselves are generally rotated 90 degrees from each other.
That's certainly not universal, I have a Lionel Conrail SD-40 that has the motors turned 180 degrees. 90 degrees seems pretty odd.
In any case, my basic point is, when looking at the motor from the same orientation, you have to cross the brush wires to get the correct rotation and have both motors running in the same direction.
Whoops. I meant 180 but typed 90. I've never seen 90.
Yes, if you consider left and right to be as viewed from, for example, the middle of the locomotive, the connections are reversed. But, since the motors are rotated 180 degrees relative to each other, that's another reversal, which leads to wiring left brushes together and right brushes together.
Right, as long as you consider how they're sitting, and don't try wiring them individually the same. You did throw me with the 90, I wondered where you say that.
Well the point is a little mute right now as the e-unit was fried from being hooked up wrong the first time so I will have to re-order another one.
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