I fit a Lenz Decoder in my BR89

I had promised to show a few pics of the BR89 with the decoder in it, and realized I forgot to do it.

One of our local BAZ BoyZ, Michael, took these pics.

Here is the loco, with the decoder installed. This is an LE 0511 decoder, so you know how small the loco is:


Here is with the headlight and firebox flicker LED's turned on. I used the mars light function for firebox flicker, and superglued an orange led to each side of the loco, just under the firebox sides of the shell:




In this shot, which I'm sorry to say is hard to see, is the shell that I had to mill out with my dremel to fit the wires and decoder. I also had to sand the decoder down a little to get it to fit:




Here is a shot of it running, and an AZL SD45 with the shell removed, to help give a size perspective:



See.... It can be done! DCC in Z!


-Robert

 

Hi Michael, and welcome to Trainboard's Z Scale forum!


I sanded the long erges top and bottom down, and was able to remove almost 2 millimeters. I actually used my dremel with a fine sandpaper disc to do it.

The pc board is multi layered, and after sanding, I could see inside the layers, but I tested the decoder with the NCE decoder tester first, and everything worked OK, so I went ahead with the install.

As it turns out, I might not have needed to sand it down, it's just that I did the decoder first, to minimize the amount of metal I needed to remove from the shell.

Be sure to tell the other guys in your ZBT group about Trainboard, so we can grow the Z Forum as big as the N Scalers forum... Well, at least bigger than the G, O, S, and Narrow Gauge forums. Maybe you can convince Michael Hilliard to post some photo's of his fantastic new projects here! Yours too!


-Robert

 

To tell you the truth Joe, I'm afraid to try it. Now that I use the Gaugemaster on my DC, I'm sure it will burn out the decoder after seeing what it does with a Scope.

I guess I can try with one of my N Scale locos hooked up with clips to see if it moves, but only after disconnecting the Gaugemaster.

-Robert

 

To answer both questions, DC and the Gaugemaster track cleaner works well together, but after connecting a scope to the track and seeing the 350volt spikes, I am sure it would kill a DCC decoder.

As far as which runs better, DC+Gaugemaster vs. DCC, I would say apples and oranges.

Why? Well, the DC by itself runs locos OK, but enhanced with the electronic track cleaner, they run very smooth after a few minutes warmup.

With DCC by itself, you are at the mercy of electrical connections being good enough not to reset your locomotive, but DCC can be enhanced too, by modifying the decoder and putting Tantalum Caps across the output of the bridge on the decoder, to fill the gaps left by poor electrica pickup.

I have one locomotive that I put 900uF of caps after the bridge, and that baby will run across 1" of tissue paper across the rails. It is on a TCS M2 decoder, and with dither turned up really runs great.

-Robert

 

Heiko, I like how clean your decoder installation are. Maybe you can give us a step by step on how you do it. If you are doing a steamer, it would really help Konrad. I guess he is looking on how to wire it and what decoder to use.

 

Mars was/is? a company that made lights for locomotives, mostly used as markers or "electronic signal flags" There were a lot of them, like combination red/white, rotating, and more.

The one that the DCC people are talking about when they say Mars function, is what was supposed to represent a "Figure 8" rotating beam. A red figure 8 meant something like a hazard or trouble, and white figure 8 was used when stopped at a road crossing for safety warning. At least that's what I remember about the Mars function. I use it for representing firebox flicker if the decoder does not have a firebox flicker function.

As far as how to fit the decoder, what you need to do is remove the disc capacitor, and it's wipers. Then you insulate the motor brush wipers from the 90 degree angle wheel wipers with a small piece of orange Kapton tape. There is enough room to fit the decoder between those wheel wipers. Then just solder with a low wattage iron.

For the shell, you need to use a rotary tool to mill out just enough clearance from the underside of the boiler, to allow the shell to fit. It is a grind, then test fir, and repeat until it fits well procedure.