Today I have installed battery R/C into another K-27. This time a little differently. My customer has mounted two speakers inside the loco body. One under the smoke stack facing UP. The smoke unit has been removed. The other speaker is in the firebox facing down. Pix to follow. This meant I did not need to mount a speaker in the tender. First up was to remove the weights. I made it easy again by cutting off the excess screw thread with a cutting wheel.
Then I broke off all the speaker mounts with a pair of pliers and a knife blade.
Once all the plastic had been removed I smoothed off the floor with sandpaper.
This allowed the battery packs to sit flush on the tender floor where I glued them into position with Silicone roof and gutter sealant.
Next I fitted the RCS # Y-CABLE which puts the two 7.2 volt SubC 2400 mah NiCd battery packs in series to get 14.4 volts. Then I mounted the PnP-3 on the Bachmann socket pcb and the rest of the Phoenix sound components on the rear of the tender floor.
I am trying a different way of mounting the antenna in this model. Don Sweet has achieved good range by simply coiling the antenna up in the coal load. I glued the antenna around the rim of the coal load with a tag on the end to connect it to the matching tag on the tender body shell. See pic # 12.
Next I mounted a two way cable on the front of the tender truck to carry the speaker output through to the loco. This connects with a matching connector on the loco. Bachmann have very neatly made this possible by mounting the connection pcb securely in place. It was very easy to remove the screws on the tender steps etc and place the cable beneath the pcb and the tender floor.
The RCS RX-8 receiver was glued in position just in front of the rear support stanchion. The antenna was fed through a small hole I drilled in the body, shortened and mounted on the outside where the rest is connected by a screw. The charge jack and Phoenix programming jack were both mounted under the water filler hatch.
The two wire plug was inserted into the PnP-3 as shown and the Orange chuff wire fed down to the rear for connecting with the Phoenix P5 sound. I removed the White smoke unit wire as it was no needed.
The rest of the battery power supply and sound system wiring was connected up. This is mostly simply a plug in operation. There are a number of screw terminal connections. The chuff wire and speaker connections required soldering.
The remaining connections from the top of the tender shell were added next.
The RX-8 cable was plugged into the PnP-3 and she was all buttoned up and ready to go. The antenna connection can be seen upper middle in the pic.
Sound system and performance testing will take place on Tuesday when the owner collects his pride and joy. If the speakers in the loco idea is successful I will try and write it up.
