During the programming of my Tsunami decoder, I was not able to get the slow speed response of my decoder as slow as I would like. It is known that there is a difference in DCC decoders, and while the previous TCS T4X decoder was able to accomplish this (be it with hours of tweaking), spending over 5 hours on the Tsunami did not get me the same slow speed crawl. Yet I like the Tsunami for its sounds, so I decided to re-motor my GP38-2.
I removed the old Athearn motor, and replaced it with a Mashima can motor. While I won't be writing an entire article here, I just want to point out a few points of importance. The Athearn motor shaft is bigger than the Mashima, so you'll have to fabricate bushings for the motor to fit the old flywheel, or get new flywheels etc. You can get these from Proto Power-West, among others. Walthers will stock these too. The other important item is the polarity. While the Athearn motor had the contacts on the front, I mounted the Mashima in the same orientation and stuck it on the frame with double sided tape, and used the top contact for the +, and the bottom for the -, as with the original motor. This had as result that the loco now runs backwards when going fwd. The Mashima has no clear markings for + and -, and it depends on how they put the sticker on the motor on how you view what top and bottom is. In the end it doesn't matter how you fit it, but just be prepared to have to swap the polarity of the wires to the motor if the same would happen to you. Video is included with this, sorry for the poor sound quality, it was made with my Blackberry phone, and it's mic is geared towards voice, the bell really muffles the engine in this vid, but in real life that's not the case at all.
In any case, the loco now runs a lot smoother and quieter than it used to do, and has much better slow speed control. Mission accomplished.
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