I have a Tsunami 1000 Hvy Steam installed in a locomotive. The headlight won't light. The locomotive works fine and sounds fine. I had the light wired to the blue and white wire. It is a grain of wheat bulb with a 390 ohm resistor in series. I cut the light and resistor loose and it lights when touched to the rails with DCC power on. The engine sits there with the sound as per an engine at idle. When I press the headlight button (NCE Power Pro) nothing happened when it was wired in.
The locomotive came with a mini connector for the light wires so pullin it apart, I measured 13.7v with the VOM set at DC volts setting. Touching the light with resistor wires to the connector it still doesn't light. Any suggestions out there?
This may be too obvious, but have you turned on the headlight by pressing the HEADLIGHT button on the controller ? The throttle must also be in the FORWARD direction.
If the headlight comes on in the REVERSE direction you have the input wires to the decoder backwards. You can either rewire the decoder's inputs (red and black wires) or change direction with CV 29.
Good suggestions. I have tried turning on the headlight by pressing the headlight button and the light does not go on, even in forward or reverse. Even adding throttle doesn't seem to activate it. Does anyone know the output of the blue/white for the headlight? Since I am getting a reading on the VOM set to DC volts, I assume that it is 13.5 v DC, and that is proper? As I have it hardwired, I have not enterred the blue wire to try and connect to yellow. I may try that but haven't yet. I'll see what I can get accomplished today.
13.5 volts should be fine. What voltage do you read on the wires with the bulb connected?
Springfield PA
In response to the question, if I hold the wires from the bulb and rsistor to the blue and white and measure the volts, I get 4.25 v DC. Removing the bulb and rsistor wires returns the reading to 13.5v.
Tsnami suspects I may have a damaged resistor. This may come from trying to hook up the existing and orginal bulb to the blue and white wires when I put in the decoder. It didn't work either, but I apparantly shouldn't have done that. It seems there was a pc board in the smokebox ahead of the internal weight that I could not see nor did not know about.
Notice your post. No mention of loco brand. If it is a Spectrum, all Bachmann Spectrum's have a PC board which has all the components for filtering the motor pulses from the decoder and necessary resistors, usually for LED lights. I have one Spectrum USRA medium tender hat has one resistor for dimming the light for reverse direction with a loco that uses a 12 volt bulb.
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.
4.25 volts is a bit low. As noted earlier what brand of loco are you upgrading?
The locomotive is a brass locomotive and I am away from the RR for the time being and don't remember the manufacturer, perhaps Daiyong? I switched the wires, taking out the white and substituting the yellow. I switched CV33 to 64 and CV34 to 65 (Hope I remembered that right, it was the directions I got from Soundtraxx). With the Power Pro reading FWD and showing L, I touched the wires to the light connector in the locomotive and the bulb with resistor illuminated for a moment, then went out. It still lights using the track if I touch the leads to the track. The voltage this way reads as before, now. I took the bulb that was in the locomotive and have installed it without any resistor and it illuminates all the time, now. This is regardless of direction or whether the headlight is toggled on or off. I have decided to give up and leave it. At least the headlight is illuminated, just all the time. Thanks for all the suggestions. I will send Soundraxx a note. They were very responsive two days ago. They think I have destroyed a transistor. I lplan on leaving it the way it is, now.