Written by: Don Butler, Sr. Engineering Technician, Intel Corporation
1) This
model has one of the motor brushes common to the frame. You can use
this as
is, but it would destroy your decoder if the frame ever shorts to
track
voltage.
2) The
wiring colors for both track pickups and the motor output leads are
switched
from the NMRA conventions. This also won't hurt anything, but would
cause
the model to run the opposite direction from expectations.
3) As
you saw, space consideration prevent using a DH163IP. I tried using a
DH163D
with the short plug harness and there isn't room for that either.
What I
did:
Red on
the right rail and Black on the left rail. While I had it down that
far I
shimmed the worm gears, they both took .015 to minimize fore and aft
movement.
soldered
the Gray output wire from the DZ143 to the copper tab. I used some
insulating
tape to prevent any possibility of a short to the frame, and
reinstalled
the motor to the frame. Now the Orange wire from the decoder
solders
onto the upper brush tab (where Proto soldered a gray wire). Throw
away
the orange wire Proto screws to the frame, also throw away the Proto
'plug
and play' wiring terminal board and the green diode lighting board.
3)
Connect the two Red leads from the track pickups to the Red decoder lead.
Use
shrink tubing to insulate the solder joint. Do the same to the Black
leads.
After these are connected you can do a motor test before moving on to
the
lights (don't short the light outputs from the decoder).
4) I
used Miniatronics 12V 40 mA 1.7mm lights for both front and rear
lights.
These sit in the same frame pockets as the original 1.5V Proto
bulbs,
so heat isn't an issue with the heat sinking from the frame. Using
12V
bulbs means no fooling around with resistor values.
This
model now runs beautifully. It starts to creep at less than 1 tie every
2
seconds at speed step 1 without changing anything on the decoder
programming.
Don
Butler
Sr. Engineering Technician