Older F9 conversion to DCC

[dankoesterman]

I have a older F9 that has one drive motor in back and with weights in the middle and  a non drive truck up front, can i convert this to DCC and How to do it?

[richg]

This will depend on your level of experience.
Measure the DC current at 12 VDC. If less than 1 amp, which it might be, disconnect the motor bushes from the pickups. Very important and could really be a challenge.
Connect the decoder according to the instructions with the decoder. It will have to be a hard wire install. The diagram shows pickups on both trucks so this "might" work.
Now, is it worth it, not sure as the pancake motor in these things are not very good and I think a three pole motor, also.
I have got a pancake motor to work on DCC but the loco pickups where not very good. DCC is very sensitive to poor pickup.
One thing to check, the light bulb. When running this loco on DC, the voltage to the bulb never gets that high. With DCC, the decoder will send a constant 12 VDC to the bulb which can melt the plastic around the bulb. This has happened to some.

Rich

[jward]

the qiuck answer is yes it probably can be converted to dcc, but those pancake motored locomotives are probably not worth the frustration. you'd be better off buying a nice new ft with dcc. they can usually be found for about the price of a good decoder.