-
Question about lights not working on older HO scale Kato SD45
Hello, i purchased on Ebay an old SD45 HO scale locomotive. It runs well except the lights don’t work. They blink on and go off when the locomotive moves. I use a MRC Tech 6 power pack.
I took the shell off to check the light board and I discovered it has a Digitrax Dn135 decoder. Didn’t know that when i bought it! Quite a surprise.
So I am guessing the light doesn’t work probably because of the decoder not reset correctly. I really don’t know. I tried DCC mode on the MRC Tech 6, but the locomotive doesn’t run.
I did notice the green wire on the decoder is not attached to anything. I think that is a ground wire if I read correctly. Does it need to connect to anything??
Anyway, any ideas on how to get the lights to work?? Thanks!
PS: Where i live there are no railroad clubs nearby. The nearest is over 30 miles away. That would be my logical next step if that was available to me. Thanks!
Unknown Member, Modeltrainmedia and 5 others7 Comments-
30 miles is nothing if you want to test your locomotive with something other than your Tech 6. The club I’m a part of is 80 miles away. It’s a 3 hour round trip every time I want to go run trains there.
-
Green wire is the function 1 (f1) for DCC. White wire is to headlight, yellow wire is to backup light, blue wire is the common for both lights. Resetting the decoder is pretty straight forward. CV8 = 008 then cycle power to the loco…but I am not familiar with the Tech6 power supply. If it does not allow configuration variable changes then you will not be able to reset the decoder. You would need a traditional DCC system. Check the Tech6 manual and see if it allows or has the capability for CV changes. If all that fails or not possible, then it looks like the decoder is using a std 8 pin plug into the mother board. You could remove that plug and remove the decoder wired to the plug but you would need a dummy 8 pin plug to get the power where it needs to go with the jumpers within the 8 pin dummy plug instead of the plug wired to the Digitrax decoder. Then you are running on DC only and see what the lights do. same thing or do they work? etc…
-
@zak98 The Tech6 power supply is DC so you won’t be able to change any of the DCC functions of the chip.
-
@RobsTrains ah ok… thanks… i had thought it was some type of dual mode power supply that could switch between the std DC and DCC.
-
-
-
Thank you for the information!
-
You have a locomotive with a DCC chip in it.
-
Yup! Sold it.
-