MTH 20-80005A Lighting Trouble

Your ground better be DC ground, not AC. Voltage is to high, but you need to see what happened when you removed the switch.  You imply it worked fine until you removed the switch.  G

@GGG posted:

Your ground better be DC ground, not AC. Voltage is to high, but you need to see what happened when you removed the switch.  You imply it worked fine until you removed the switch.  G

Correct. It worked fine until I removed the switch. In these pictures you can see the wires of the switch and that the lights did work. I originally wasn't going to remove the switch but eventually did. As far as the ground goes I just hooked it up and got voltage. I'll measure it on the DC setting and see if its lower. What should the voltage be? 

I assume this is a PS-2 3V board.  So the bulbs are 6V, and that is the effective voltage pwm.  In the working picture the purple wire should be positive DC voltage in the 24V range at 18VAC track power.  The return to DC ground is how the voltage the lights see is controlled through the FET.

That switch controlled PV to the local express bulbs, but it also looks like you removed other purple wires from the board.   All the common pins via the thick trace are probably the PV trace and need a purple wire connected to it.  The Local express were isolated via the switch.  If there is a marker plug that WOULD NOT have purple PV, rather a separate wire from 8 pin with 5V and a return that has current limiting resistor.

I also see cracked solder joints on the pins, so you need to ensure the solder joints are good.  G

@GGG posted:

I assume this is a PS-2 3V board.  So the bulbs are 6V, and that is the effective voltage pwm.  In the working picture the purple wire should be positive DC voltage in the 24V range at 18VAC track power.  The return to DC ground is how the voltage the lights see is controlled through the FET.

That switch controlled PV to the local express bulbs, but it also looks like you removed other purple wires from the board.   All the common pins via the thick trace are probably the PV trace and need a purple wire connected to it.  The Local express were isolated via the switch.  If there is a marker plug that WOULD NOT have purple PV, rather a separate wire from 8 pin with 5V and a return that has current limiting resistor.

I also see cracked solder joints on the pins, so you need to ensure the solder joints are good.  G

Yes, this is a 3v board. I'd imagine the resistor is what's under the black shrink tubing? The only things I did to the wiring (after removing the switch) was put the PV wire (from the 3v board, middle contact on the switch) to the connection on the light board that has continuity with the 3v board (unless I did that wrong). Yesterday I removed a small purple jumper wire thinking that it might have something to do with why my lights don't work but that didn't fix the problem. I didn't mess with any of the grounds, after doing the above wiring mods I haven't done anything else. I'll check my solder joints. 

No resistor there, just a splice for some reason.  G

@GGG posted:

No resistor there, just a splice for some reason.  G

Ah. That's kinda weird. I'm just not sure what happened in removing the switch why my lights don't work. I can't figure that one out. I'm really thinking I put the purple PV wire in the wrong place. 

Trace wires and trace the printed circuit on the board.  Each Light (not markers or LEDs) has one wire going back to the 12 pin and 8 pin connector.  Plus there is one Purple Positive wire from the 12 pin going to PCB.  That pin has traces to each of the bulb 2 pins.

Now if you connected Purple wire wrong, that would be part of it,  or you damaged the PV trace on the 3V board.  Or blew the light control circuit.  G

@GGG posted:

Trace wires and trace the printed circuit on the board.  Each Light (not markers or LEDs) has one wire going back to the 12 pin and 8 pin connector.  Plus there is one Purple Positive wire from the 12 pin going to PCB.  That pin has traces to each of the bulb 2 pins.

Now if you connected Purple wire wrong, that would be part of it,  or you damaged the PV trace on the 3V board.  Or blew the light control circuit.  G

I'll take a look and report back. 

Got my lights working! I moved the purple wire and fixed a few solder joints. So far so good. Thanks G for the help.