Bulbs: Most Life-Like locos have been plagued with dim lights after converting to DCC. Life-Like has tried many things to resolve the problem, but has not come up with anything promising. In fact, the instruction in their latest locos say to replace the bulbs with 12-volt bulbs - which is also wrong. For HO scale, they should be replaced with 14-volt bulbs. Using a 12-volt bulb will require a suitable resistor to keep the bulb from burning out prematurely. If the Life-Like bulb didn't draw so much current, you could use a suitable resistor with that and not replace the bulb at all.

Mars Light: If the model you have has a Life-Like Mars light, and also has an NMRA plug, then pin 3 of that plug usually controls the Mars light. If you have a decoder with Function 1, you can solder the green wire into pin 3 of the NMRA plug that came on the decoder and control the Mars light with Function 1.

Solder pads: Some Life-Like locos come with solder pads instead of an NMRA socket. To install a wired decoder in these, you simply cut three traces (marked on the PC board with an "X") and solder the wires to the numbered pads - Orange wire to P1, the Yellow to P2, the Black to P4, the Gray to P5, the White to P6, the Blue to P7, and the Red to P8.

The bulb may be dim and need to be replaced. If replacing the bulb, it needs to be wired directly to the decoder. Connect one lead of the front bulb to the white wire, connect one lead of the rear bulb to the yellow wire, and connect the other lead of both bulbs to the blue wire. If not using 14-volt bulbs, be sure to use suitable resistors: one on the white wire and one on the yellow wire. With all this in mind, it may be just as easy to remove their board all together and hard-wire the decoder directly to the loco's wiring.