Photo Essay: Decoder Install in an MDC Climax A


SpaceMouse

Fun Lover
This photo essay is a decoder install in a MDC Climax A. An MDC boxcab would be identical.

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Above Picture: As far as non-plug and pray installations go this one was pretty straight forward. The engine appears to be isolated from the frame as the blue wire leads from the pole and attached to the engine case.
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Photo Above: Slight problems arise when the decoder is placed in its proposed location. The back of the decoder rubs against the flywheel and it is resting on top of the drive gears
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Photo Above: There is a little over 1/16 of an inch of extra insulation that can be shaved off. This provides enough clearance.
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Photo Above: To protect the decoder form the drive gears (and vice versa,) I folded a piece of styrene to cover the gear. To make the bends I slightly scored the plastic. Because the bends were quite weak, I reinforced them with scotch tape. I then painted the plastic black.
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Photo Above: This model does not have lights and I have no current plans to install any. I did leave enough lead that in case I get a wild hair, I could install them. I taped the stubs to the decoder. Before I de-soldered the leads I put a dab of red paint on the side where the red was attached. At this point just for laughs and giggles, I tested the pole to the frame and there was no continuity.

Tip: I took all the cut-off wires and kept them. They come in handy if you just happen to have a Proto 2K S1 that you want to put a decoder in and you don't want to look all over the garage and your workbench and your computer tool kit and your old radio speakers and clip one of those to make the install.
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Photo Above: Now it is just a matter of connecting the wires. The orange lead I connected to the pole I where the red wire was previously attached. The grey lead attached where the blue wire was attached. I made the decision to splice the wires instead of pulling the existing leads and soldering to the connectors. It was semi-arbitrary. IT would probably been more neat to solder to the connectors, but hey. The red lead connected to the red wire and the black lead connected to the blue wire.

Off to the basement, programmed, ran like a charm--if not that at 50% throttle it creeped along like an S1 switcher.

Dos Rios Mining Company Climax pushes an ore cart into the mine
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> How about one for photo essays as well?

(This was originally posted as a reply to the announcement of the new clinic topic....)

All of the categories are designed for photo essays. You can attach your images, or use img tags to insert them as you've done in your post.

I don't want to lump the photo essays into one topic, as that would make it hard to find what you're looking for. So the best thing to do is pick the topic they fit best and post away!

Ideally many of the threads here will take the form of photo essays.
 



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