Skip to main content

This subject has come up before and yes, it can be done. I just wanted to share the work I did on my Atlas O scale Texas & Pacific SW9. I removed the conventional Dallee electronics and installed a TAS SAW board with a custom smoke unit. It was a lot of work but it all fits and no modifications were done to the drive assembly. I know TAS did make boards to fit the SW8/9’s but we all know they’re far gone by now. I could’ve installed an ERR board but hey, I had this laying around and wanted to try it out. Take a look and tell me what you think. I’ll upload a video of the assembled unit after I’m done with the trim details.

Thanks,

Dan

Attachments

Images (5)
  • C150AC7F-D884-4935-ADC7-0663F45C309E
  • ED6646AC-D923-4DA7-8A03-E95075894E66
  • 87028217-B12C-49CD-9A4D-42C49606271A
  • 8ADCA2E3-41B4-4D5F-9807-F6DB7102E29D
  • 4A676A4C-72CE-41DE-9C32-E60887970771
Original Post

Replies sorted oldest to newest

Very cool, I'm impressed you crammed that thing in there!   Nice that you managed to pipe the smoke out as well, that's a great touch.

Thanks GRJ! I'm surprised too. A little spit and a shoe horn go a long way. I had to relocate a few large capacitors on the RS power and R2LC boards to shorten the stack height. I got it down to 5/8" (about 3/4" OAL from soldered tip to tip) not including the MOSFETs. The 2 reward facing MOSFETs were relocated via 3/4" wires to mount lower on the chassis (on each side of the front driveshaft). The forward facing MOSFETs were left alone and I cut the TAS heatsink in half and directly mounted it to the front truck pedestal. You can see the new threaded holes in the front pedestal in the first pic. There are a few voids within the board stack to tuck the capacitors in. The smoke unit funnel is soldered to the smoke element board (temp. for now) so I have to unscrew the heating element to remove the RS power board. The rear light is located under this board so it's a P.I.T.A. to remove the RS power board to unplug the light to get the cab shell off. I ended up soldering a male & female plug closer to the cab to make it easier. I did the same with the ANT because it's mounted to the roof of the plastic cab shell. All in all, it did take a bit of time. I'm really surprised with the smoke fan output. I thought it would be marginal at best but it performs a lot better than factory TMCC smoke units. Now that I figured it all out, a second one will take a fraction of the time. Only downside with this board is it's lacking cruise. But I'm happy with it. I'll post a video shortly.

Thanks again!

Dan

@Rod Stewart posted:

Very impressive. I can't even imagine hiw many hours you have into the project. I pretty much gave up on the idea of upgrading mine!

Rod

Rod,

I don't think I want to calculate the hours spent on this. lol That being said, many know a first run always takes an exponential amount of time to sort it all out. But, now I know what to do and how to do it for future projects. If you're interested in converting yours, I can lay it all out for you IF you have the ability to do so. Again, there's a lot of relocating board components, some drilling and tapping, and you'll need to modify the heatsink and fabricate a mounting bracket for the smoke unit. The only shell modification was snapping off/removing the threaded pedestal bosses for the factory speaker (mounted under the hood vents). The new speaker was relocated to the fuel tank. I  enlarged the factory dip-switch opening to accept a 40x28mm 2 watt speaker using my Dremel. You can skip this step and install a round speaker but you may lose sound quality. All the required parts were ordered from Digi-Key. Lemme know.

Thanks,

Dan

@Rod Stewart posted:

I really like the smoke unit ducting. Nice work.

Rod

Thanks! I should also mention if I were to do it again, I'd change the tubing shape and size and route it a little differently just to reduce the fabricated pieces and time spent on it. I ended up removing the factory tapered plastic smoke stack and used 5/16" brass tubing. The base of the plastic smoke stack is also 5/16" so it kinda looks proportional. The brass funnel gets hot and I didn't want anything to melt. I used a stepped drill bit and drilled the plastic stack out from the underside. The stepped drill bit self-centers the hole and the plastic stack came off cleanly. It's a nice slip-fit. I might turn a piece of brass to replace the upper half of the new stack so it looks more prototypical. We'll see if I get to it.

Thanks,

Dan

Add Reply

Post

OGR Publishing, Inc., 1310 Eastside Centre Ct, Suite 6, Mountain Home, AR 72653
800-980-OGRR (6477)
www.ogaugerr.com

×
×
×
×
Link copied to your clipboard.
×
×