Frustration

Bill, Don't cut anything. Solder to the motor tags and then insulate the metal where it used to make contact (the rest of the metal motor is in a plastic housing!

I then tapped and screwed into the lower half of the chassis blocks and fastened the red and blacks to these.

Oh, don't forget to insulate the rest of the chassis at the top, bit of sticky tape seems to suffice here.

Andy

04 Diesel shunter. I settled on the TCS M1 decoder, mainly for it's size, and ordered two. The first of these I trialled in a Bachmann 45xx Prairie, and I was very pleased with the result, so tonight I set to the 04. As this is a split chassis design with the motor buried deeply between the frames, I've felt some trepidation in dealing with this one. The frames have to be completely dismantled to get at the motor, everything went well and I ended up with a neat pile of metal and plastic parts. Having snipped the motor contacts so they no longer touch the frames, I was ready to connect the decoder. I opened the decoder bag, to find a beige plug with a bundle of wires.... no decoder! So it's all gone back together while I wait to contact the vendor tomorrow. Very frustrating indeed, hopefully I can get this done before the weekend, Cheers, Bill.

Hi Andy, Bit late for that I'm afraid! I'm taking out the brush housings and soldering directly to them, to avoid heat damaging the plastic. If I'd studied it a bit more closely beforehand, I would have realised that the tags came out completely when the brush housings are removed. Cheers, Bill.