Tools You Will Need
1. Needle Nose Pliers
2. Wire Cutter/Stripper
3. Jewelers screwdriver
4. Bathroom Caulk
5. About 6 inches of 30 gauge or smaller wire
6. Heat Shrink Tubing available at radio shack
7. Soundtraxx 1/2" speaker
8. Optional Additional 25V Capacitors, 60 uF or bigger recommended
9. Soldering iron
Instructions:
1. Use the needle nose pliers to pull the two support bar wires going into the steam chest on the front of the loco. They should pull out sideways from the boiler tank. But if they don't you can lift them from the front bar on the other end. If you don't remove these, you can't take the top off easily.
2. Replace the front and rear couplers with #14 Kadee Whisker Couplers. (The front pocket is a little narrow for the standard #5) If you have a problem getting the front screw plate cover back on (the screw is a bit short.) take a #11 blade, and ream the bottom of the hole a couple times. This will allow the screw to sink in a bit furhter, so it can grab the threads and hold.
3. Turn over the locomotive. There is one screw at the front. The screw at the front is located between the cylinders. There are two tanks at the rear under the engineer and fireman in the cab. These may come off with you take the top off. If they do, simple glue will put them back into place. The cab steps come off fairly easy as well, so you'll want to tape these on (so you don't loose them) or take them off.
3. With the screws out, lift the FRONT of the steam boiler up. When it comes up a little, push back towards the rear, and lift off the cab. The firemen may come loose. Bathroom caulk actually works better than super glue or MEK (Testors) because it's flexible and strong when you put the cab back on.
4. There's a small circuit board ahead of the motor. There are two copper clips/jumpers. One top, one bottom. Pull them off. Cut off the yellow/tan capacitors that go across the motor leads.
5. Next, pop out the firebox inside the cab. It should pop out with no problems. With a TINY bit of work, the inside of this box is perfect for the 1/2" soundtraxx speaker. About 1/4" to 1/2" from the back of the boiler, cut a slot in the flanges. I used a disc dremmel, and #11 blade to clean out a slot.
6. Do a test fit of the speaker facing towards the motor, with the speaker buttom sliding into the slot holes. At a slight angle, it should just fit WITHOUT hanging out the bottom.
7. Soder two leads to the engine. Seal the hole behind the speaker with bathroom caulk. I used a piece of cardboard to flatten it out.
8. Cut about 1 1/2" off the leads of the Tsunami Mini. Give the green/yellow stripe wire a long exposed lead (about 1"). Give the speaker purple wires a long exposed lead. Give the blue wire a long exposed lead. You can cut the cam sync wire off. Give the blue wire about 1" exposed lead. The remaining wires connect to the circuit board. Give them each about 1/4" lead exposed max. Remove the screw on the left side of the loco that holds the circuit board in place. Find that spare piece of wire. Give one end 1/4" lead, and the other end 1" lead.
9. Twist all the wire ends. Pre tin all the short 1/4" connections. Take the blue wire and WRAP it around the 1/4" exposed end of the spare piece of wire. Solder the blue wire to the base of the spare wire. Take the other end of the spare wire, and SPIRAL WRAP the 1" lead around base of the + pole of the capacitor. This is the keep alive wire. Solder it to the base and cut off the extra lead. Take the green and yellow striped wire and wrap it to the negative pole. Solder it to the base and cut off the extra lead. Be sure no strand wires can cross between poles, or the capacitor will be useless.
9b Optional: The 0-6-0T doesn't have that many pick-ups. Therefore it is likely to die at speed step 1 on turnouts. To remedy this, you can hook more 25V capacitors in parallel to the main capacitor. A good place to hide these is underneat the coal load. The coal load is a seperate metal piece that will slide out faily easily. A little dremmell work will allow the additional capacitors to hide underneath it. When hooking the additional capacitors in parallel, please to sure that + connects to + on all the capacitors, and - to -.
10. Insert the appropriate wire into the appropriate hole on the 0-6-0T circuit board. Note the left side begins with 8, then goes 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7. (Pin 3 is skipped.) The manual that came with the 0-6-0T has what each connection does. The Tsunami packaging tells you what color to hook up. Push them ALL the way in through the hole. If they won't fit through, re-tin the end. Once they are in, add just the TINIEST DROP of additional solder to each pad to hold it in place.
The colors from left to right are Red, Orange, Yellow, Black, Grey, White, Blue/Spare wire
11. Once all the wires are in place, lift the circuit board, and cut off any leads that are sticking out underneath, flush to the board. Put a tiny drop of solder on each pad here as well.
12. Connect the purple wires to the speaker leads by wrapping them around the speaker leads and soldiering them. Electrical tape, or heat shrink tubing should be used here.
13. Test each connection with a volt meter. Turn the meter to "Ohm" or "->|" Take each probe and touch each hole side by side. If the ohm meter says "0" or the "->|" setting makes a noise, then you have a short. Clean up your solder connection. Sometimes reheating the solder and seperating them with a #11 between the holes helps clear the short between the solder pads.
14. Reattach the screw for the circuit board. Make sure there are no exposed leads that can touch each other.
15. Put it on the test track. It will make sounds in DC @ about 6Volts, but it won't move. To make it move in DC you'll need to program it in DCC first. Test the various buttons functions like horn and bell.
16. If you get no sound, and no solid red light shining through the purple heat shrink wrap on the decoder, or a blinking red light, you have a short. Recheck all your connections.
Tips:
1. Pretinning wires is the easiest way to get them to fit through a hole. Don't try to soldier the hole first.
2. If a hole on the circuit board becomes clogged with soldier, a #70 drill bit can clear the hole clean. (If you don't have a solder pulling plunger)
You are now half way done.
Finish coming this Friday (hopefully)
Don - Specializing in layout DC->DCC conversions
Modeling C&O transition era and steel industries There's Nothing Like Big Steam!
Fantastic!
Where did you get the 0-6-0T?
- Luke
Modeling the Southern Pacific in the 1960's-1980's
New Haven I-5Where did you get the 0-6-0T?
Commonly found on e-Bay. Going price is about $60 which is MSRP. Not bad for a Spectrum Model.
Chances are they have been sitting around for a while. You'll need to clean & adjust the pickups as well as clean the commutator, and greese the gears for optimum performance.
You will find some options here.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ned=us&q=spectrum+0-6-0T&btnmeta%3Dsearch%3Dsearch=Search+the+Web
By the way, the decoder is a Micro-Tsunami decoder not a Tsunami Mini.
http://www.soundtraxx.com/products/dcc/microtsunamidecoders.htm
Rich
If you ever fall over in public, pick yourself up and say “sorry it’s been a while since I inhabited a body.” And just walk away.