Sound Traxx Tsunami Headlight issue.

[dcarrell8]

I have three Tsunami 2 steam decoders on my layout.  All three no longer have working headlights. I haven't ruled out that they may all be burnt out but it seems odd that it's only these locomotives.  I have not tried a factory reset yet, because it's just a pain to go back in and tweak thing back to how you had them.

Is there any kind of known glitch in a CV (or combination of CV's)  that might turn them off?   

[NDave]

I have installed 5 Tsunami Steam 2 decoders (all hard-wired) into my steamers (2 Bachmann 4-6-0s, a Bachmann 2-8-0, a Kato FEF-3, and an Athearn Challenger), and know of no such issue with light CVs.

I did have a headlight-related issue with one loco, tho'. All of my locos have had head and rear lights installed/replaced with tiny SMD LEDs... initially using 1000 Ohm resistors (supplied with the LEDs) to drop the voltage/current to the LED. For some unknown reason, one loco blew its headlight LED 3 times in the first year after my install. A real pain, because the LEDs were permanently cemented into a housing turned from styrene rod, and every time the LED blew I had to remake the housing from scratch. After the 3rd LED replacement, I swapped the 1000 Ohm resistor with two 1000 Ohm SMDs in a series, for 2000 Ohm total... and it's been running without issue for a couple years, now... still plenty of brightness to work with even with the higher value resistance. The only thing I can figure is that the resistor that came with the LED was bad, or out of spec.

Good luck!

[dcarrell8]

Thanks NDave

I took a look at the parts list for the installs.  They used 1.5v 1.2mm lamp (incandescent).  No resister is listed.  I'd guess thye just didn't charge for the resistor so it's not listed. 

It's safe to say it has popped 

[peteski]

A 1000 ohm (1k ohm) resistor should be safe for LEDs powered from a 12V source. With a typical white LED, it would result in about 9mA of current passing through the LED. But if the resistor had a lower value then yes, the the excessive current would have likely damaged the small SMD LEDs