My Bachann em1 decoder went to meltdown yesterday. MAnaged to splice wires together to get the loco running. hOw do I get the front headlight running w/o major surgery?
What do you mean it went to meltdown? What wires did you splice together? You probably blew the decoder or the front light, and will need a new one at the very least.
I am also curious about what happened to the locomotive. I own two of them, but currently only have a small test loop so I have not run them recently. Why are you posting here instead of contacting Bachmann about the warranty and/or service?
Put the loco on the track, ran 1 foot and stopped and smoke billowed out of the tender. I disassembled the tender and found the decoder had melted thru it's covering. I cut the 8 wires connecting the pcb to the decoder. I jumped the 2 power feed wires to the 2 motor wires as outlined in the K4 thread posted earlier by another member. Voila, engine runs perfectly. The rest of the pcb seems to be dedicated to the lighting circuit, which is what I was having trouble tracing. As for sending to Bachmann, I do not want to pay their fee and risk not getting my loco bAck. Plus their has to be a way to go back to simple circuitry, like we used to have.
Take a deep breath. In this day and age of "plug and pray" or manufacturer demanded on-board, we have forgotten how we used to do it. Two wires to track, two to motor(s), two to headlamp, two to backup lamp. Now, you've figured out the basics. You will need to connect the headlamp LED to the light outputs...but...big BUT.....you will need a dropping current resistor, or you'll pop the LED. You can go through all the rigmarole of calculating the value...but just find a 500 ohm to 1K ohm and use that. (especially since we have no clue what the specific needs of that LED are). Place it in either lead..doesn't matter. Connect to your track/motor bundle. Try it. If the headlamp fails to operate, reverse the locomotive. If it comes on, simply reverse the LED leads. Some folks like to place a diode in line...I never, ever have...just because it is a Light Emitting DIODE. Does it for you. If you have a backup light, same process, to the reverse lights, should only come on in reverse. Now you're back to "normal". If you care, right rail positive, loco moves forward (always from the "driver's seat"). Gets your track power right before you go through lighting. Dave
Dampfloko, See if this document is any help? http://www.bachmanntrains.com/home-usa/dwg/dwgs/N SCALE EM-1 2-8-8-4.BODY & DECODER.pdf It looks to me like socket #6 is the front head light and socket #2 is the rear light and socket #7 is the negative or common wire for both the front and rear lights?
scalecraft thanks for the info i would like to go back to the way we used to do it. doesn't the dropping currant resistor already exist in the pc board. is their not a way to tap into that existing circuitry.need to know as i want to gut my athearn challenger back to basics
My point of suggesting that one contact Bachmann is so they know this problem occurred, otherwise how will they become aware of the problem. As long as one elects to repair locomotives instead of contacting the maker, the maker is left to assume there are no problems. I retired from a multinational corporation, thus no from experience that problems are tracked and analyzed. I have dealt with the warranty people and had excellent results. I was never charged a fee for warranty service, so I puzzled by the comment about paying a fee.
When was the last time you had warranty service performed and how old was the item? Their policies changed about 3 years ago: http://www.bachmanntrains.com/home-usa/service.php "Items less than a year old are fully covered and will be serviced or replaced at no charge when accompanied with registration card and proof of purchase. For items more than one year old, there is a nominal service charge for repair or replacement (prices subject to change - effective 3-11-13): $25.00 - All HO and N Scale standard non-DCC locos $35.00 - All HO and N Scale standard DCC locos $45.00 - All HO and N Scale Spectrum"
The engine was purchased over a year ago and I did not save my receipt from the Evilbay seller. On top of that ,$35 plus tracked shipping gets me to the $45 range. The real point is we should be able to troubleshoot and simplify. As a collective group I think we know more than "Pedro" the Bmanntech. I know that I can gut the decoder and circuit board and solder/hardware everything as it used to be in the old days. Really did not want to spend that amount of time on a loco 1 year old. My Concor Bigboys and Challengers still run flawlessly after 20 plus years. As my engineering friend says-keep it simple stupid!
I did see your post . You cannot jump the headlight circuit directly to the positive feed. You have to incorporate the drop down resistor into the circuit. My point is it already exists in the pc board. Just trying to access it and save hours of labor. In the end I will gut everything ,r&r , and be happy in my own little world.
That, I am afraid, appears to be good advice for all Bachmann DCC products. While Bachmann has upped their game in other areas they are woefully far behind in their decoders.
Plugging a positive into pin 6 on the PCB and a negative onto pin 7 on the PCB should be using the on the board circuitry, according to the print. These are the pins the DCC decoder use to control the lights. Unless something has changed with DCC decoders, the output voltage from the DCC decoder light circuit is 12 VDC.
I respect your choice, it is your locomotive. I would have another dcc decoder installed if it were mine; probably one with sound.
