| UP 4213 | February, 2010 |
| ©2010 Daniel Cortopassi
| Please do not redistribute without permission. Usage Info |
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Kato SD40-2, UP 4213
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Lighting & Electrical Upgrades
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I love Kato locomotives because they generally run so well, however the SD40-2s they produced in the 1990s sometimes have problems with stalling because of a poor electrical path between the trucks and the motor.
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Like many modern HO locomotives, the trucks on the Kato SD40-2 have a copper strip behind the plastic sideframes that doubles as a wheel bearing and electrical pickup for each axle. Whether you are using DC or DCC, one good way to improve this model is to solder wires from the copper strips up to the decoder or light board inside the locomotive. This bypasses the friction contact copper strip system that Kato designed into the model. I hate relying on friction contacts alone for electrical pickup, as if they get dirty or loose they stop working. I did this using some very small (30) gauge wire quite some time ago, and it helped.
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Despite that, I was still having problems with the locomotive stalling on my layout. Oddly, my little Kato NW2 that I featured on HO DCC Installs Volume 2 was running on the same tracks and almost never stalled, despite the fact that it is lighter than the SD40-2 and has four fewer wheels in contact with the rails. Hmm...
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I decided to try adding auxiliary electrical pickup to the wheels like I did on the NW2 using some brass wire soldered to the same copper pieces that hold the wheels. You can see them in the photo, along with the red wires that I had added previously. The brass contacts are only touching the outer wheels, but even this much was a huge improvement.
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I also put a little bit of conducta-lube on the wheel bearings before returning the model to the layout and trying it out. The difference was amazing. Now this locomotive rarely stalls.
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I installed a LokSound 3.5 decoder in this model and used LED lighting with fiber optics. The lighting setup is similar to the Kato SD40 I featured in HO DCC Installs Volume 1. Since photos I have of UP 4213 show that it still had its class lights in the mid-1990s, I decided to make them operable. I used golden white LEDs for those and sunny white (a brighter white) for the headlights. The class lights use .020 fiber optic strands while the headlights use .030. I also took advantage of the LokSound decoder's ability to dim the output voltage of lighting functions to keep the class lights fairly dim. They have a nice amber-white glow that is bright enough to be visible but dim enough not to compete with the headlight.
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Unlike some of my other wired installations, I retained the factory light board and plugged the LokSound into the 8 pin socket, though I got rid of the original LEDs. I used a rectangular 16x25mm speaker mounted on the frame just behind the light board. It fits very well and has plenty of volume firing downward over the rear truck.
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