Large Scale Central

Putting Airwire G2 into a Bachmann Indy Mogul Questions

Electronics Power and Sound
#1

I am in the process of putting an Airwire G2 into a Bachmann Indy Mogul and have a few questions.

First, do most of you remove the little circuit board with capacitors that is on the solder pads of the motor? Should I remove this? Should I hook the Airwire G2 motor leads to this?

Second, I want to try to reuse the stock sound board that came with the Mogul, has anyone done this? I did some poking around with my multi meter tonight and determined that there seems to be only a high and low volume control and on\off on the stock switch in the tender and it might be as simple as just connecting the 9V battery and the chuff sensor wires (but probably not).

Lastly, I read on some forum posts here that adding weight to the loco will help with pulling power, is it possible to add to much weight? It seems there is a lot of room in the domes and boiler to add weight, but I don’t want to over do it.

I got the Airwire G2 to work on the bench tonight with just the battery, loco motor\chassis assembly and headlights, so, so far so good, but this is my first Loco modification \ Airwire install so any other advise will be welcomed.

Thanks

Dave S

#2

Remove the board from the motor and connect directly to the motor. For the sound I believe it runs off a 9v battery that goes into the water fill hatch on the tender. If that’s the route you want to go just use it as is.
Some weight is ok but it doesn’t have a strong drivetrain so too much could damage it. I didn’t add any weight to mine and it can move 4 AMS cars (heavy with drag) around the yard with no problems.

Just remember to put a fuse between the battery and A/W board.

Terry

#3

I tested the sound tonight and I only needed to hook up the power switch, speaker and chuff sensor to get it to work, so I will re use it, sounds kind of funky, wish I had taken a sound recording before I tore the loco all apart, it sounded even funkyer with a visatron speaker. And it does seem there are only two sound levels and off.

#4

I was asking about this circuit board, should i leave it on or take it of with the Airwire G2?

Should be a picture here:

#5

You could probably get away with leaving that on. It looks to me like chokes used for motor noise suppression.

#6

That particular pcb can be left on safely. 2 x chokes and an array of .1 mfd monolith caps is fine.

The one that must be removed has a pair of 47 mfd electrolytic caps which is way too much capacitance for pwm ESC’s. At best it makes pwm outputs overheat. At worst some of them had one cap in backwards which made them go bang with reverse voltage.

#7

Does anyone know how to hook up the smoke unit to the Airwire G2?

#8

Hook TM2, terminal 3 to one side of the smoke unit. Hook the other smoke unit lead to terminal 7 or 8 on the same terminal strip. Then, you will have to program your desired F key so that it turns FnA on.off.

#9

I converted an Indy to RC (although not airwire) and battery some time ago, preserving the Bachmann sound as I don’t use sound much. Description is here http://www.gscalecentral.net/battery-power/bachmann-indy-2-6-0-conversion-to-battery-rc/msg237169/#msg237169

although I didn’t go into as much technical discussion as Tony does when he describes his conversins, basically because I don’t have the knowledge to do so. The loco is still running fine, in fact it gets as much running as any of my locos, indeed it’s close to my most used; but it definitely benefitted from the extra weight.

#10

I converted an Indy to RC (although not airwire) and battery some time ago, preserving the Bachmann sound as I don’t use sound much. Description is here http://www.gscalecentral.net/battery-power/bachmann-indy-2-6-0-conversion-to-battery-rc/msg237169/#msg237169

although I didn’t go into as much technical discussion as Tony does when he describes his conversions, basically because I don’t have the knowledge to do so. The loco is still running fine, in fact it gets as much running as any of my locos, indeed it’s close to my most used; but it definitely benefitted from the extra weight.

#11

For now I am going to use the onboard sound. Will test the smoke unit tomorrow night.

Thanks

#12

I just wanted to update this thread, I am going to use a Phoenix M. 97 that i have on hand instead of the onboard sound card. I ended up adding about 3/4 pound of BBs so in the boiler area and can add some more if needed. The chassis on this unit seems to weigh about 2.5 lbs, I will weigh it all and post pictures here when I am done.