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Bryan, I'm fortunate enough to have a friend who can almost do this blindfolded, but the installation is not that hard, except for soldering the tiny wires to the tiny pads. I've attached two installations, one on a Genesis F3 that show both the power and lighting wiring, and one of the exact Challenger E5A you want to do. This one has the power done, but we had run out of the LED headlight and Mars light, so those aren't hooked up yet. The chip and the speaker are mounted with double-sided tape. Checking the attached schematic from LokSound, you hook up the track left and right power on both sides of the decoder (Genesis) or on one side (Challenger) depending on the set up. The two motor wires go on the Motor right and Motor left pads. The two speaker wires attach to the speaker and the Loudspeaker 1 and 2 pads. We put in both the headlight and the Mars light. Since I'm modeling 1950, all my locos have a single headlamp - not dual. The two red light wires from the Headlamp and Mars light go to U+ Common pole pad. The black wire from the Headlamp goes to the Front light pad, and the black wire from the Mars light goes to the AUX 1 pad. Dan's wrapping up decoder installation on my 21 brass E's, so I guess I no longer need to worry about plastic black nose stripe engines, but had they come out a few years ago it would have saved me from painting and decaling the units. I'm still finishing up decaling on the E8's. Bryan - on the E5A, you will need to strip out the constant lighting circuit that Challenger installed in some of the factory finished units - later runs? It is meant for DC and when you put this on DCC track - even to run on the zero address - the capacitors on the circuit will eventually explode! This happened to me several times before we figured it out. It does no harm to the engines and since we were replacing the incandescent bulbs with LED bulbs, it made no matter. We've standardized on the LokSound v5 decoder for all diesel engines on the layout. I have no idea how the other manufacturers installation would be done. We put a decoder in both E-units in a consist, but only in two of the three-unit F motors. The B unit gets a LokPilot. We only use the so-called "keep alive" (capacitor) decoders for the engines. This is their 58921 decoder. We also have the LokProgrammer for installing the files and speed matching. Rich
On Thursday, December 25, 2025 at 04:18:23 PM CST, Bryan Howell via groups.io <tubaman21=yahoo.com@groups.io> wrote:
Rich, How difficult was the decoder install on those Es? I have a Challenger E5AB set to do and I've never done a hardwired install, let alone brass, and have been a little nervous. Bryan J. Howell Superior, WI _._,_._,_
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