BigE
Active Member
Guys
This random thought just struck me, FWIW. If one is converting an old Athearn BB grinder to DCC, specific steps are taken to "isolate" the motor from the frame to prevent "smoking" the new decoder. Most of us have heard of the situation with the supposedly DCC ready Lifelike S1, which under certain circumstance the installed decoder can be "smoked" because the motor is not isolated properly, in spite of having an 8 point DCC adapter plug. What's to say that there isn't a similar issue with some of the BLI (or other, decoder "smokers" we have been discussing? We are all familiar with the "Quality" issues BLI has with their L1 and other Paragon 3 system products. Problem could be in design or assembly.
All that sounds more like an assembly/installation issue to me. Might even be a simple enough matter of not using enough tape to ensure adequate isolation.
That's just an educated guess however since I've never done one myself. I did watch Carey put a decoder in one of my old engines. Even as many as he's done (probably several hundred), he still got the directional backwards and had to redo part of it.
E