Kit: Zimo MX648 with YouChoos MicroCube7

A fairly straight-forward fit for DCC sound, hard-wired, as you'd expect, and with a little removal of plastic for the speaker... here is our donor model, a weathered Farish B1...

Remove the metal coal load, and note the previous resident - a Bachmann 6pin decoder, which we will now remove. The tender body comes off with 4 screws in the corners underneath.

Remove the circuit board... simply lifts out, and un-solder the wires from the motor terminals, and the rear pair of pickup wires.

Remove a little off the plastic near the front to make space for a MicroCube7 speaker. This creates some small holes in the front facia, but they are not visible once the speaker is in place (didn't even need to paint anything).

Enter the MX648, which we will remove all unwanted function wires from and cover the result in Kapton tape, which is thinner than the original shrink-wrap.

Loosely place the decoder on a piece of sticky tape while we trim the wires to length and solder everything up.

Feed the decoder through and slot into place - perfect fit, and the tender body sits neatly on top. Place a little electrical tape above the speaker to remove any chance of shorting.

That's it!

Back together, and running nicely!

Please note that these guides are provided as useful resources for you, as-is. YouChoos cannot be held responsible for errors in the information, or for any damage caused to your models or equipment if you choose to follow any of the steps detailed here.