I've finally bothered to make an account. I'm located in Michigan, though I'm originally from Northeastern Illinois, and consequently started my train obsession early with 1630 back in the late 90s. I put in a few hours of volunteer time on her during the big rebuild when I was in high school. I've recently joined a model railroad club and I've been getting back into the hobby now that I'm an adult with adult money. Mostly grabbing interesting motive power units when I can find them, and slowly adding to my rolling stock fleet. A few interesting pieces I have include a Model Power E8/9 with the wrong name and a matching B-unit, which I understand didn't exist. It is, however, brass, and really neat, so I'll be looking into adding power and probably renumbering it to 2121 to fit within the typical numbering standard. The A unit received a DCC/Sound upgrade and scratch-built lighting, but the motor took a dump and I think the gearing in the trucks needs to be checked, so it's an ongoing project. I have two Decapods from Bachmann: 1630 and 1632. Both are the current focus, as both perform great on my old Bachmann controller, but exceptionally poorly on my new NCE controller. I think this is due to an RFI suppression circuit that Bachmann locomotives seem to have a problem with, but my Bachmann 4-8-2 and 2-8-2 doesn't have this problem.
Welcome aboard! This forum is a fantastic resource for all things Frisco. Be sure to check out the archive as well.
Welcome aboard. I grew up in Jackson Michigan. Doug Hughes that started what this group grew out of lived in Ann Arbor a while.
It's just not a Frisco layout without Decs. How well do yours run? I just purchased a sound decoder for 1632 after toasting the basic decoder I bought years ago, and I'm going to try removing some resistors and checking the motor circuit for any interfering pieces. Kinda hard to find good info on why these two are behaving so much different on different control systems. I have HO, entirely because I was gifted a box of HO trains and track from our new neighbors when my family moved around 1999. Stuck with it ever since. Not shown are my two Mikados, one Bachmann with WOWSound and an IHC with a basic setup, and a custom painted brass 2-8-0 I snagged on eBay. The only one that hasn't gotten a DCC conversion is my IHC Pacific, but I'm working through the Decapods, first.
There are two capacitors that need to be removed and two coils in the motor circuit that need to be removed/bypassed. They are found on the board that is located in the tender. The capacitors will be connected to the motor leads and may be SMD (Surface Mount Devices) or have wire leads. In the attached picture the capacitors are next to the coils.
I had a feeling those coil resistors were part of the problem. Should be easy with my 1632, since it's a first release model and there's not much going on. 1630 has a bit more going on, but I'll see if I can cross reference off your board and trace the connections. Edit: yeah, it looks like your board and my board are the same once the wires are out of the way.
You will need to substitute a wire for each of the coils. C1 and C2 are the capacitors in the old version.
That tracks with the info I was finding. I don't recall a capacitor being hooked to C2 on 1632, but I probably wasn't paying attention to the underside of the board.
