Lococruiser LC101 first installation !

by Roy on Sunday 28th August, 2011 at 08:08 COMMENTS (0)

Today, we fitted the Lococruiser basic LC101 for the first time. The model we chose to fit it to was a Hornby M7 tank.

Although Hornby reccomend removing one of the side tank weights to locate the decoder, we chose to place it underneath the coal in the bunker, as the removal of such a large weight may effect the haulage capacity of the loco.

This meant drilling a small hole from the bunker bottom through the running plate for the routing of the wires. We then fitted scale head and tail lamps front and rear, along with a red LED in the firebox to make use of this decoders very handy 5th function.

After testing that everything was fine and working as it should the M7 was reassembled.

Using the CVs to configure the lights, it was quite simple to use the F0 function to operate the white running lights so that they illuminated directionally. The red tail lamps were programmed so they could be turned on ond off at will individually using the F1 and F2 buttons. Using the F3 button, we set CV64 to 64 as advised in the instructions and achieved a pleasing firebox "flash" effect. However after some experimentation, by setting CV64 to 70, the "flash" effect became more realistic, giving an alternating bright and the dimmer effect.

The only other adjustment that was needed was to change skightly the drive frequency as there was a slight "hum" from the motor. This was adjusted using CV9 .

A very pleasing result !!

Roy