Can the tenders on a LC+ locos be swapped back and forth between other LC+ locos.... You d think they would all be the same... 4 pins, just a speaker and electrocoupler... Im sure this has been done...
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NO. I know that seems harsh and you are thinking it's only a 4 pin connector, there's only a speaker and electrocouplers, what could go wrong? What could go wrong (and I know from personal experience), is that there is no standard to how the 4 pins are used in the coupling and as such, the speaker wires and elecrocoupler can be cross wired and will instantly pop the audio amplifier chip. When you plug in the other tender and power, the electrocouplers gets track power and ground while the speaker is on a separate DC ground plane, so if other of the electrocouplers wires are in a speaker location, you send AC track power up the amp chip.
Side note, you can replace the factory 8 ohm speaker with a 4 ohm version and get a little oomph out of the whistle, but you may have to turn down the chuff sounds- all depending on what loco and the sounds on the board. They all use this amp chip https://www.elinfor.com/pdf/
Not worth the risk. Trying to save you from a repair.
Again, unless you go in and validate the wiring scheme for every tender and engine and ensure you follow a common standard- I can say that Lionel did not. I found out when connecting a tender from a 6-82968 Pacific Lionel Lines to a Nickel Plate Road Hudson 6-84936 engine. Buzz for a microsecond and pow went the amp chip. In a pinch, because nobody had that amp chip handy, I found this article https://www.diystompboxes.com/...ex.php?topic=97012.0 and bought this cheap cardboard amp for less than $10 to steal from, and then bought 10 of those amp chips for future spares but had to wait 3 weeks from China.
Similar stories exist for people swapping MTH tenders. Unless you REALLY know what you're doing, swapping tenders is a very bad idea!
One exception. You won't damage anything swapping the Lionel TMCC or Legacy wireless tenders. They may not work, but you won't release any magic smoke.