Sunday, November 1, 2020

Kato 3060-3 EF65-500 DCC Install

This model is prety much the same than the previous DCC Install published for the Kato 3061-4 EF65-2000, so you can check the previous post here for more detailed information. It is basically the same locomotive with the same hull and space where to install the decoder, and almost the same light board. I just found one small difference in the capacitor compenent.




You can see in the following photo that light board capacitor is so small that is almost imperceptible. This is the only difference I found with the light board of EF65-2000 model:



Strategy used will be the same, so the previous schema to prepare the light board for a wired decoder is still valid:


Red arrows inticate where to cut the cooper tracks:
  • I personally prefer to remove capacitors and coils from the board as I had extrange behaviours in the past in some models where I kept them. So first of all I removed the capacitor at point 8. Don't confuse the resistor in the middle (we need it where it is!!) with the capacitor in one of the sides of the board. Capacitor is extremelly small in this board!
  • Four cuts are needed to isolate the contact with the motor. I will solder orange and gray wires to points (1) and (2)
  • Red and black wires (track current) will be soldered in points (3) and (4)
  • This time I didn't solder the white wire to point (5) and I soldered it directly to the negative lead of the led light. The positive side of the right led is already connected to the resistor.
  • For the left led (as it is in the photo) you have to bridge the positive side of the led to the resistor track by soldering a small wire between points (7) and (8). You will need to scratch a litle bit the cooper track of the point (8) as the pad is small as the capacitor. The yellow wire will be soldered directly to the negative side of the led (6).

Here you can see the decoder already soldered and how to fit it in the hull. The same milling is required like for the EF65-2000 that you can check with more detail in the previous post:







 I hope that you found this useful!