bachman. shay 3 truck to dcc

[Chris Wright]

Ihave a Bachmann three truck Shay. I bought a Soundtraxx Economi for it. Using the wiring diagram supplied with the Shay, we isolated the motor and function wires. Attching hem to the decoder we got sound and so on. The minute we tried to intertogate the chip it tripped the system. Eventually we tested the decoder on a Roco tester unit and it was fine taking commends and CV changes. So it would seem we have eirher missed some wires or dobe something wrong. Do we leave the pcb in pkace that came with it, the one behind the cab in above truck 2?

Has anyone some advice please or a wiring diagram showing which wites or bunches of wires need to be fed to the decoder?

 

[PhilP]

Could be one of several things here..

1. Are there any suppression components on the motor(s)? - It is normal practice to remove these when fed from a decoder..
2. May just be that with sound, lights, etc. the decoder pulls too much current for the programming mode on your DCC system.. Turn off what you can before programming.

As for the particular model you are fitting the decoder to, I have not had experience of one of these, sorry.

 

[Chris Wright]

Well everyone, I finally solved the mystery of how to do it. Firstly unscrew the usual motor leads, red, black, orange etc and fit them to the decoder. Next unplug the white six pin plug on the pcb and snip all wires attaching them to the decoder correctly. The blue wire is an assessory ground. The motor or power ground consists of two light blue wires unattached to anything and tucked under the pcb. Fit those to the common ground pin. Finally the two light brown diodes on the top of the pcb need cutting free nd dumping. If using a Z21 then switch off railcom. All works perfectly and the Z21 gets readouts as it would with railcom. I am keeping the voltage at 16 for the moment and rhe loco loves it.

I must admit that the Soundtraxx Economi was a test buy before I bought more but will be buying more for the climax and forney. At £92 from the States plus £18.40 customs fees for a decoder and sound in G scale was amazing. Sure you need to spend. little time selecting the various sounds you wish to use but on Digitraxx site under the Economi you will find four manuals that can be downloded and guide you through it. Well satisfied.

 

[Graham ASH]

Chris,
I have .recently installed dcc/ sound to a Heisler, Climax, 2 6 6 2 a 2 truck Shay and others. I used a company near Northampton to buy both Lenz Gold Maxi, and uhlenbrock sound units and 8 amp speakers from.
total cost £60 for each gold maxi, plus £57 for each sound module, total cost £117, included postage, and of course I have full 1 year uk warranty on all.
your problems going to be if anything goes wrong.
Graham

 

[Chris Wright]

Graham you obviously are unaware of your rights under the Sale of Goods Act. You have a full three year UK warranty and in certain circumstances this can be five years.

I did not buy from UK as all my stuff being from USA I felt it was right and proper to use US stuff rather than my usual ESU bits direct from German dealers (full sound and speaker £72 delivered with EU 2 year warranty).

As for anything going wrong, well in 40+ years of buying direct from EU, USA, Japan nothing ever has. In any case if something did a dealer would not wish to forfeit their reputation. So am I worried? No, I have too much of a positive outlook to worry.