Have you upgraded a DDA40X?

I have not done one of these, but looking at your pictures a couple of thoughts come to mind.

I think you will have to do away with all the spring contacts on the smoke unit boards and rewire all the shell lights using 2 pin plugs. Lots of work but doable.

Basically on the smoke units you want to cut all the circuitry except the two resistor pad, and put them in parrallel. I would dremel the unused part of the boards off altogether. PS-2 boards can run two smoke units in parrallel.

If there is a constant voltage board that controls cab lighting through the spring contacts, you could retain it. In this case I would just cut the smoke board traces along the outside of the board just adjacent to the pair of screws by the air intake hole. This is referring to your second pic. This will effectively isolate the resistors from the rest of the board.

The ditch lights should be programmable so that they either stay off or work automatically through the PS-2 programming. I don't know if MTH has a specific DDA40X sound file but I would guess so.

The upgrade kit comes with a manual smoke switch that you mount through the floor. You use this to control the smoke in conventional. In DCS it is controlled by the PS-2 board.

This will be a challenging upgrade, and may not be the best choice for a first attempt.

But it is certainly doable.

Rod

I had my proto one version upgraded to TMCC with EOB many years ago and then bought a dummy unit and put in the Lionel GP board to operate electro-couplers that I installed with directional lighting.

Love my DD40ax's.

Like Ted, I had my DD40AX converted to TMCC. TAS did the work and it is a superb addition to my railroad.

I have the 20-2980-1 Proto-2, and it is my best sounding MTH diesel engine. The horn and the engine sounds are simply great.

Also, it has easily pulled a 40-car train up a 2% grade that include 360° of Ø108" and Ø99" curves, and several of these cars are diescast and are very heavy. Question is, how many more cars could it pull?

Great engine!

Alex

I'll have to look under the boards and see if there is a clear trace from the plug pins to the springs.  If no resistors I could wire in using the existing plugs, and then do the same on the shell with the new bulbs.

I should have done that with the first one I did, the GG1, because now it has a rats-nest of wires crammed into the shell. 

Maybe I'll save this one for later and do the ABBA F-3 upgrade first ....

Looking at the picture in the MTH site I don't see any difference in the shell/truck detail over the one I have, the Proto version, so that's why I decided to upgrade it to Proto2 (with the new one at $800 ....)

I hope the Proto2 sound is as good as the Proto freight yard sound set.

Looked underneath the boards and there are some electronic parts attached; could these be something for the old lighting, the Proto ones?