I am trying to put sound in my 3 PA juice hogs. I think the right decoder is a Lenz Silver because of it's high stall rating. I need an answer as to a sound system to hook up. I figure to put the sound in a PB unit. My engineer son in law tells me that if I wire the sound system in parallel the high amperage won't go through the sound unit. Basically, I know I could remotor them, but I wonder if there's another way. The PA's may be juice hogs, but they run superbly.
All the tuning in the world won't fix one of the ones that Life-Like put 'wrong' motors in. However, that is only a very limited production series, all the other ones are fine and shouldn't overload an HO decoder. The only way to know absolutely for sure is to test with a DC supply and meter. Stall the motor by holding the flywheel while maintaining 12 volts, and read the current. If it's in the 3-4 amp range, it's one of the bad ones and you really should remotor it. 1-1.5 amps and it's fine, if a bit high, but still within the limits of most HO decoders.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
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