DCC smokey jo help

[Figglepop]

Hello all, I'm after a bit of help.

I want to convert my Smokey Jo engine to DCC, sounds easy looking at the Hornby walk through but there is a hitch. My Smokey Jo's wiring is not as pictured by Hornby.

http://jacksprat.co.uk/Hornby/smokeyjo.jpg

As the wiring is different to the walkthrough I'm hoping someone could shed some light on this and explain what I need to do. I'm using the Hornby R8249 decoder as suggested.

Thank you 😀

[Howbi]

It's not so different......first, unsolder the two black wires from the chassis pick-ups.........then unsolder all the components from the motor.........the thick black wire has a capacitor in it the same as the red one in the guide to be refitted......next straighten the wires from the yellow capacitors to allow the little black plastic clip to be slid off......keep one yellow one for refitting  then reassemble as per the guide.......hope this helps........HB

[Figglepop]

Hallelujah 😀

Thank you very much,  I'll try this tomorrow and report back.

[96RAF]

The simple way with these little monsters is to strip all the stuff off the motor and desolder the pickups back to their tags, then hard wire as per the guide red and black to the track, orange and grey the other way and tape up the rest.

 

I wired in a NEM652 8 pin socket insulated then hot glued to the motor mount so installing a decoder was then a doddle.

Pictures of it are on the other computer 2000 miles away.

Here is the socket, about 30p each on Ali-Express...

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[Fishmanoz]

The rule of thumb is very simple - unsolder everything from the motor, discard any electronic components you now have (capacitors or inductors) as they are not needed for DCC.  You are now left with 2 wires, one from the pickups on each side, and 2 motor connections.  Then all you do is solder one of decoder red or black to the pickup wire from one side, and the other of red and black to the other pickup wire, followed by decoder orange and grey to each of the motor connections.  Test run to make sure it's working and, should it run backwards to what you were expecting, swap orange and grey (swapping red and black achieves nothing).

 

That works for all locos where you have a wire coming from the pickups on each side, which is a lot including virtually all later locos.  Some old ones use the chassis to make one connection to the motor and a slightly different approach is needed for them.

[96RAF]

As fishy says there are some variants with slightly,different wiring includin one with no wiring where the motor is mounted upside down with the brush contacts pressing onto the wheel pickups. Easy fix here is solder wires to the pickups and invert the motor so the brush contacts are on top again and proceed as before.

Rob

[Figglepop]

Great response from you all, thank you.

I went with Fishy's post in the end, works a treat . Now to wrap it up for Christmas 😀

[Fishmanoz]

Glad something works for you Figglepop.  Present for Figgle?

[Figglepop]

Glad something works for you Figglepop.  Present for Figgle?

Haha yes, my daughter actually. She has allways played with trains on a wooden track, as a suprise I decided to build a track on a baseboard as per the Hornby layout and get a couple of trains. My next job is to grab my old Hornby Triang's out of the roof to convert them also.

I'm really enjoying it 😀