A Couple of VL-BB Questions?

in my experience the whistle steam takes a while to get going.  I fill the mega steam dropper about have full and empty it into the whistle steam outlet.

I would think upon buying such a high end engine,you would test all the features to make sure you goy your moneys worth.If not,return it.Nick

This is/was a common issue since they were released last year. There are several YouTube videos on the subject. Most of the lack of performance with this engine is caused by lack of smoke fluid. Running it with the smoke units low on fluid will burn/char the batting, making its performance worse.

Whistle smoke from the VLBB is still an issue. The manual tells me that turning

off the main smoke unit will turn off the whistle smoke unit. That is not correct.

The whistle will smoke with the main unit turned off but it depends on the fluid

amount and the transformer type and voltage.

The new LM Challenger has whistle smoke but nothing in the manual about adding fluid

or about the switches under the engine.

Calling Lionel is of very little help.

Its like one group adds features and another group writes the manuals but nobody

talks to each other.

I found that my blowdown smoke unit had the thermistor stuck right up against the smoke resistor, obviously an assembly error.  I had zilch blowdown smoke.  I positioned it about 1/8" away, and I get nice blowdown smoke now.  The whistle and stack smoke work fine, no adjustments needed there.

Currently running GREAT, all functions are working.

Brent

My blow down never worked well, the whistle worked great at first, but over time got weaker.  I did find if I turned the main smoke switch off under the dome, then the whistle and blow down would get better.  When my coal load broke I sent it back and also had them look at all the smoke units.  They rebuilt them and since the whistle and blow down were worse.  So I gave up and turned those switches off and will wait until the warranty is up and rebuild them myself with the information on these forums.

As for turning off the main turns off the whistle, that is true if you use the smoke off command on the remote.  But yes, they have separate master switches under the dome.

If you're simply waiting for the warranty to expire, just open it up and fix them.  You might as well get to enjoy them.

I know, and I have been tempted, but my luck is I'll break something and thus void the warranty, which won't happen after the warranty is up.

sinclair posted:

I know, and I have been tempted, but my luck is I'll break something and thus void the warranty, which won't happen after the warranty is up.

I had mine open the third day I owned it .. I couldn't stand the blowdown .. 

Mine had a bad LED for the cab light and weak blowdown.  Now it has a cab light and good blowdown.