PS3 Upgrade into K Line Scale Hudson

Thank You, John!

That styrene solution looks great! That being said, I did tear out the K line tach ring, trimmed up the MTH holder, and it fit nicely. Glued the MTH holder on and then ziptied it just for good measure. Spaced out at 1.1mm, and I'm reasonably happy with the result. Now I see that I need to lengthen the sensor harness a bit since MTH wasn't anticipating use on a motor that isn't mounted in the back of the boiler like a normal person would design it, lol.

How would I go about ordering the MTH constant voltage board from you? Should I send you a message on here or contact Hennings Trains? Would be glad to get that part from you!

I guesssssss I'd just want the MTH board to keep things simple. The adjustable switching module looks pretty trick, but I'm too dumb to understand its advantage or how to use it, lol. Feel free to clarify if you've got time, but no worries if not. I appreciate you taking the time to respond. and just let me know how to get the part from you if you're still willing to sell!

@Mallet1218 posted:

Thank You, John!

That styrene solution looks great! That being said, I did tear out the K line tach ring, trimmed up the MTH holder, and it fit nicely. Glued the MTH holder on and then ziptied it just for good measure. Spaced out at 1.1mm, and I'm reasonably happy with the result. Now I see that I need to lengthen the sensor harness a bit since MTH wasn't anticipating use on a motor that isn't mounted in the back of the boiler like a normal person would design it, lol.

How would I go about ordering the MTH constant voltage board from you? Should I send you a message on here or contact Hennings Trains? Would be glad to get that part from you!

I guesssssss I'd just want the MTH board to keep things simple. The adjustable switching module looks pretty trick, but I'm too dumb to understand its advantage or how to use it, lol. Feel free to clarify if you've got time, but no worries if not. I appreciate you taking the time to respond. and just let me know how to get the part from you if you're still willing to sell!

Send me an email to my profile address, we'll work something out. The fixed voltage module puts out 6VDC, it's the MTH standard for the PS/2 lights.  For their LED's, they add a series resistor, so if you have plain LED's for the class lights in the locomotive, throw in a 470 ohm resistor in series with their wiring.

For future reference with the MTH tach decoder, it's best to keep the flywheel spacing in the 0.8mm to 1.0mm range spacing.  As long is it's working well now, no need to change it.

Here's the sensor spacing vs sensitively curve, note that the peak is around 0.8mm.

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

Send me an email to my profile address, we'll work something out. The fixed voltage module puts out 6VDC, it's the MTH standard for the PS/2 lights.  For their LED's, they add a series resistor, so if you have plain LED's for the class lights in the locomotive, throw in a 470 ohm resistor in series with their wiring.

For future reference with the MTH tach decoder, it's best to keep the flywheel spacing in the 0.8mm to 1.0mm range spacing.  As long is it's working well now, no need to change it.

Here's the sensor spacing vs sensitively curve, note that the peak is around 0.8mm.

That graph is interesting, and I'll definitely keep that in mind if I have any issues once I finally fire this thing up.

I sent you an email; feel free to get back to me whenever is convenient for you.

I pulled the flywheel and removed the K line pcb.  Reinstalled a MTH FW but you can use the orig with tape added. G

So, I'll post up pics at some point to help out anyone who might be considering the same upgrade.

Been chipping away at this project a little at a time as time allows. Things seemed to be going pretty smoothly until I was drilling the second hole in the locomotive frame for the tether circuit board only to have the tip of a carbide bit break off for no particular reason. Had to cut it out with a Dremel, JB weld the area, reshape it, and re-drill. Ughhhh. Five minute job turned into a bunch of BS.

Anyway.... I actually have all the main parts hooked up except for the smoke unit, and I've ordered the lighting parts I need (thanks gunrunner)!

I was thinking of testing it as is to see if it works, but out of pure paranoia I'll ask... It's okay to try and fire it up without a smoke unit or any locomotive lights connected, right? Just want to make sure it won't throw the thing into some weird error mode or something.

@Mallet1218 posted:

I was thinking of testing it as is to see if it works, but out of pure paranoia I'll ask... It's okay to try and fire it up without a smoke unit or any locomotive lights connected, right? Just want to make sure it won't throw the thing into some weird error mode or something.

No problem at all, I frequently test without any lights or smoke.  One precaution, don't fire the couplers until at least the rear coupler is fitted or you have put a 4.7k resistor in place of the coupler.  The PS/3 boards get testy about no couplers.

@Mallet1218 posted:

Things seemed to be going pretty smoothly until I was drilling the second hole in the locomotive frame for the tether circuit board only to have the tip of a carbide bit break off for no particular reason. Had to cut it out with a Dremel, JB weld the area, reshape it, and re-drill. Ughhhh. Five minute job turned into a bunch of BS.

I guess nobody told you about how diecast has the propensity to grab your drill bits if you're not really careful.   I did that twice years ago, but I finally learned my lesson.

Well, I usually work with steel and aluminum applications with automobiles, but I reckon I’m aware now, lol. 😂 So far, so good! Thanks again for all the help, y’all. Hopefully I’ll post a complete and successful end product soon! Mounting that smoke unit will be a challenge, even with y’all’s advice.

looks great good luck with your upgrade and repair!

Alan

For the scale K-Line steam, I typically am able to mount the smoke unit with one small plate to mount it to the existing mounting posts for the puffer.  If you align the threaded stack with the shell stack, you can then solder a brass tube stack extension to the threaded brass cup that screws into the smoke unit.

It appears that you are coming along quite nicely. Am certain I read it somewhere years ago but don't remember -  why did K-Line depart from conventional wisdom and front mount the motor?

@c.sam posted:

It appears that you are coming along quite nicely. Am certain I read it somewhere years ago but don't remember -  why did K-Line depart from conventional wisdom and front mount the motor?

A bunch of their steam has the reversed mounted motor, but I don't know for sure when they did that.  FWIW, Lionel followed their lead on stuff they got from K-Line, so now we have a whole bunch of unreliable gearboxes in a bunch of different models.

Ahhh..  Traditional quality proven by the 'test of time'  Lol.

Are the original K-Line gearboxes 'faulty'?  I had a couple of them (Mikado, B6, and another one) and didn't experience any issues with them 11 - 12 years ago...

The guy to ask is Pat @harmonyards, he's seen tons of them.  I know he replaces the K-Line chassis with the MTH chassis on a lot of the K-Line scale steam, that kinda' tells me that the K-Line chassis wasn't the best there is.

@c.sam posted:

Ahhh..  Traditional quality proven by the 'test of time'  Lol.

Are the original K-Line gearboxes 'faulty'?  I had a couple of them (Mikado, B6, and another one) and didn't experience any issues with them 11 - 12 years ago...

They’re not faulty Sam, in fact, Kline’s gear boxes are pretty robust. It’s the motors they chose that are the problem. In the case of the Kline Hudson, Kline put a tiny single mabuchi 385 in a full scale Hudson. Not exactly the premium power choice. Kline needed a way to compete with the big dogs, and to do so, they introduced some exquisite scale offerings. However, to compete, and come in at a lower price point, they chose the cheap little RS385. The Kline scale die cast Hudson to this day, is arguably the finest die cast Hudson ever produced. As far as stock performance, it’s underwhelming at best. That’s why so many have chosen the route to do the MTH chassis swap. The Kline Hudson does out-dress even MTH’s scale Hudson. So bottom line is they did what they did to minimize costs, and be competitive. For at that time, it was the great arms race, where we never saw so much new products hit the streets on a yearly basis from all the mfr.’s …..

Pat

Yeah, I can already tell y’all that this one isn’t going to be a “high baller.” My MTH PS2.5 (upgraded to the 3v board) Dreyfuss would run circles around this thing. As mentioned, it’s a great looker, though, and I’ll still get use out of it with this upgrade.

Starting to mess with the smoke unit. How important do y’all think it is to place rubber-ish wrap around piece on it? Shell is just wide enough for the unit to fit nicely without it, but with that “jacket” on there it begins snagging on things. Will have to grind a few spots out to make it work with the insulation, I think. (Namely where the metal wires are bent in the boiler to hold on exterior railings).

Actually, scratch the above question, lol. In the time I took to ask, I was able to do some grinding and get it to fit with the rubber surround.

@Mallet1218 posted:

Yeah, I can already tell y’all that this one isn’t going to be a “high baller.” My MTH PS2.5 (upgraded to the 3v board) Dreyfuss would run circles around this thing. As mentioned, it’s a great looker, though, and I’ll still get use out of it with this upgrade.

Starting to mess with the smoke unit. How important do y’all think it is to place rubber-ish wrap around piece on it? Shell is just wide enough for the unit to fit nicely without it, but with that “jacket” on there it begins snagging on things. Will have to grind a few spots out to make it work with the insulation, I think. (Namely where the metal wires are bent in the boiler to hold on exterior railings).

That rubberish wrap is also the fan motor to bowl gasket. You need it, or your smoke output will be dismal at best. The notch cut out on the backside is the fan motor’s window to push volume into the bowl. You can slice away the outer jacket, but you need the back side where the notch is to form a gasket between the two halves. If you do decide to slice it, you may need some way to affix it in the gap. A tiny bit of wether strip adhesive would do the job.

Pat

I just count on the fluid bowl and the fan chamber holding the gasket together.  That's how they come stock from the factory with just the little rubber piece.  Most smoke units don't have the rubber gasket surrounding them.  I like it for diesels as it helps with heat isolation. but with diecast steam, that's a non-issue.

Managed to get the smoke unit mounted, but I’ve run into my first significant issue.

Started the fully wired engine up, and the headlight immediately blew. Thought, “uh oh, I have a short, but no issue found. Checked the voltage coming off the blue headlight lead, though, and it is WAY high. Nearly 22 volts DC. That can’t be right, can it? Shouldn’t it be closer to 6 volts?

The lights get PV on one leg and the other leg is a FET that has a PWM signal to DC common to light the light.  So, one lead to the light will have 22 volts DC on it.  If you have somehow shorted the lighting wires to the frame, even momentarily, you have toasted the lighting outputs.

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

The lights get PV on one leg and the other leg is a FET that has a PWM signal to DC common to light the light.  So, one lead to the light will have 22 volts DC on it.  If you have somehow shorted the lighting wires to the frame, even momentarily, you have toasted the lighting outputs.

Uh oh.... Sooooooooo...... Does that mean the entire PS3 upgrade board is essentially trashed?

Ugh. I think I know EXACTLY when the lighting lead got shorted as well.

EDIT: Full disclosure, I was probing the lead to figure out which wire was the negative for future reference when I spliced in an LED setup, and my probe slipped and shorted the two wires out. Saw a spark and everything.

It's probably the top of the stacker board if you toasted a lighting output, that's where the lighting FET's are.  Those are a lot cheaper than the bottom board.

Note that NOTHING on the PS/3 boards of any variety can connect to frame ground except the track feeds!  Any other lead grounded is not going to end well!

@Mallet1218 posted:

Uh oh.... Sooooooooo...... Does that mean the entire PS3 upgrade board is essentially trashed?

Ugh. I think I know EXACTLY when the lighting lead got shorted as well.

EDIT: Full disclosure, I was probing the lead to figure out which wire was the negative for future reference when I spliced in an LED setup, and my probe slipped and shorted the two wires out. Saw a spark and everything.

It’s not the end of the world, although you’ve likely nuked the lighting circuit on the PS3 board. One solution would be to use a constant voltage board like the one shown in the picture below. Available from mthpartsandsales.com …….use the included inductor in the kit. This board would be wired directly to track power.

Pat

@harmonyards posted:

It’s not the end of the world, although you’ve likely nuked the lighting circuit on the PS3 board.

It's most likely the top stacker board, pretty cheap fix, not like the bottom stacker board.

Mallet1218:

Been following your PS3 upgrade with interest, and I know that feeling you get in the bottom of your stomach, when you see that bright flash, and the "magic smoke" appears!!!

It's a steep (and sometimes expensive) leaning curve when you start down this rabbit hole......but what else would we be doing????

Hold the faith brother!!!

Peter....Buco Australia.

@Buco posted:

It's a steep (and sometimes expensive) leaning curve when you start down this rabbit hole......but what else would we be doing????

Peter, you do this stuff long enough and you'll let the magic smoke out of a few boards, can't be avoided.

Thanks for the support, y'all. I'm am NOT happy with myself right now, but hey, I've spent $200 bucks on dumber things, lol. This has been quite a lesson, and I've been wanting to try installing one of these upgrade kits for years now. Just frustrating to get through all of the drilling, grinding, and soldering only to have something as ridiculous as a slipped electrical probe mess the project up. Again, a lesson in how careful I have to be if I'm going to try my hand at something like this. I already had a lot of respect for guys like John and Pat for handling this kind of stuff on the regular, but this ups it even further. Probably should have just sent the engine to one of them to begin with, but I've really wanted to try the process.

I guess I'll email MTH and see if they would be willing to sell the top stacker board, and if not, I'll weigh between a "work around" like the CV board or just biting the bullet and ordering another kit. If I go the latter route, at least I'll have some extra parts I can hang on to, and since all the hard work is done, I can drop the new board in the tender in a matter of minutes.

There you go Mallet1218......that's the right attitude. Don't let this little hiccup beat you!!!!

I sometimes have to "walk away" from the workbench and calm down, and then let rational thinking come back to me.

As I have said to GunrunnerJohn recently.....all's well that ends well.

Peter.....Buco Australia.

Even with the FET blown, you can still run the forward headlight with an LED and 1K resistor on the same circuit. I've repaired a few older PS2 5v boards with the same problem this way.

Lighting headache aside, engine runs really well. Put it together and did some test runs. Rear markers are fine, PSA, back up light, and everything else seem to work well. I guess the only other thing I can currently fault is the chuff rate. It’s more than four per revolution; in fact, it’s nearly double that. Did a factory reset and it stayed the same. Sounds like a Volkswagen TDI engine at higher speeds, lol. I currently just have a DCS Explorer and a remote commander. To change the rate, I’ll need a full DCS system, correct? Actually have the DCS 2 on order… Reckon I’ll change it or try some different sound files then. I had MTH put the current sound file on it before shipping the upgrade kit.

You're doing just fine and learning a lot!   She sure smokes like a champ.  Please ditch those miniscule pilot wheels at your earliest chance - they are a real eyesore on that handsome rascal!  Lol

@c.sam posted:

You're doing just fine and learning a lot!   She sure smokes like a champ.  Please ditch those miniscule pilot wheels at your earliest chance - they are a real eyesore on that handsome rascal!  Lol

Absolutely agree, lol. Once she officially rolls out of “the shop” and I’ve got it all correctly set up, that’s the next modification on the list.

Just look at the PS-2 upgrade for diesel wiring.  You can get it from the Web.  It will show you the output pin for the Interior light on the 12 pin connector.  Move the wire from the HL output to the IL output.  That will give you a HL output controlled by IL soft key.  The 12 pin has the HL, IL and RL all next to each other on the 12 pin.  G

@Mallet1218 posted:

Absolutely agree, lol. Once she officially rolls out of “the shop” and I’ve got it all correctly set up, that’s the next modification on the list.

Careful, your curves will dictate if you can modify the pilot truck. There’s a reason the mfr.’s use puny pilot truck wheels. It’s to navigate sharp tinplate curves. The J class Hudsons use the larger 36” pilot truck wheels for high speed passenger service. Putting larger wheels on your Kline Hudson can cause them to hang up & derail on anything less than O72.

Pat

You can change the tach tape to a custom tape to change the chuff rate. Note that it will also change the scale MPH calibration, but I doubt that's accurate since this is a different brand locomotive, so that's not a big deal.  If you're getting too many chuffs/rev, reduce the number of stripes on the flywheel, and it'll change the chuff rate.  If it were exactly double the proper number, then you'd want half as many stripes on the flywheel.

A simple way to reduce the number of stripes by half is to simply use a Sharpie marker and color in every other white stripe.

@Mallet1218 posted:

I guess I'll email MTH and see if they would be willing to sell the top stacker board,

MTH sells the top board alone for $31, and they show it in stock.  I recently bought several of them.  You might guess I'm somewhat of a stickler for things working properly, so it would bug me that the headlight didn't work as intended.

Thanks to all for the great thread.

I inherited two of the K-Line berks and am in the process of performing the same surgery on the  Lima 1 berk. I found this thread after I had already gutted the engine and installed the tach reader holder. I plan to follow Pat's recommendation for mounting the smoke unit in the shell, as well as use an old PS1 module identical to what John posted for the fire box lighting.

A few questions:

Is a resistor required for the marker light LEDs when using the PS1 lighting board?

Does it make sense to add small finned heatsinks to help with the motor overheating?

The PS/1 lighting board has one or two connectors with resistors already in place for the class light LED's.

Where are you adding heatsinks?  If the motor is overheating, you have a bigger problem than adding heatsinks!

I just received the engine and did a test run only to find the cruise was not functioning and the sound was intermittent at best (it did not have TMCC), so I have no experience with the motor overheating. The idea of heat sinks was more of a preventative measure.

@ScottM posted:

Thanks to all for the great thread.

I inherited two of the K-Line berks and am in the process of performing the same surgery on the  Lima 1 berk. I found this thread after I had already gutted the engine and installed the tach reader holder. I plan to follow Pat's recommendation for mounting the smoke unit in the shell, as well as use an old PS1 module identical to what John posted for the fire box lighting.

A few questions:

Is a resistor required for the marker light LEDs when using the PS1 lighting board?

Does it make sense to add small finned heatsinks to help with the motor overheating?

The motors in K-Line steam engines will handle 5 18” passenger cars or 10-15 modern freight cars with free rolling trucks. The motor might get a little warm but shouldn’t burn out. If you like passenger trains of over ten cars then you need a bigger motor.

Pete

@ScottM posted:

I just received the engine and did a test run only to find the cruise was not functioning and the sound was intermittent at best (it did not have TMCC), so I have no experience with the motor overheating. The idea of heat sinks was more of a preventative measure.

It would actually be pretty difficult to put decent heatsinks on the motor in any case.