Appears as though I may have a faulty reversing board in my 027 Alco FA pair. I had installed the williams sound unit, but the bell rings constantly and the horn doesn't sound. I bought another sound board, installed it and get the same behavior. The new reversing board is on the way, albeit I wish that swaptronics was not the best repair method. Thoughts and ideas?
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The sound board and E Unit board are not related. I doubt the new E Unit will fix the problem. Do you have another transformer you can try with this?
Pete
Have you tried reversing the wire on the soundboard?
@ Pete, I have tried this on the test bench, switched the power leads to the track and on the layout. I'm using an MRC pure power dual.
@Bill, the plug from the sound board fits in to the reverse board one way I believe. Ill see if I can plug it in differently.
See if there is another socket on the reverse board of the same 2-pin type. I have had similar experiences when I inadvertently plugged the connector for the sound board into the wrong one on the reverse board. One socket should be on the top and one on the bottom on the reverse board. Depending on which way the reverse board is mounted, the correct one could either be the top or the bottom one.
If this is Tru Blast II the sound board is wired directly to the track. I believe the MRC transformer has both a bell and whistle buttons. If you reverse the connections to the track the whistle button may activate bell and vice versa. If you get the same results with the wires reversed its likely a problem with the sound board. If you now get horn and no bell it may be the transformer. Williams sound boards are sensitive to transformer DC offsets. Some transformers work better than others.
Pete
Phil is correct, there are two two-pin sockets, only one has track power, the other is something different, I believe it may be the reverse lockout switch.
I don't think so, he's probably connected to the wrong connector on the board.
@gunrunnerjohn....it was in the wrong socket. Moved it to the other side socket and it works just fine. Thank you for your help.