Hello everyone,
I'm a very curious person, I really like to know how things work. I'm not at all worried about voiding my warranty because i fix, upgrade, and repair lots of engines. I was interested to see how Lionel set up this cab forward smoke unit, so I went for a look inside. I'll start from the beginning the shell comes off quite easy, two screws in the front two screws in the back and two screws that will remove the cab. After that the top shell opened up with ease. Fantastic craftsmanship by Lionel !!!!!!!!!! Take a look below
Enjoy!!!
Alex
Inside view of the cab, the wiring is so nicely done
Top smoke funnel, you will notice on the right side of the smoke funnel, where the whistle
steam exhausts, you cannot put smoke fluid in there. Only put smoke fluid in the main stack
Also notice the dual fan motors, one for the main stack one for the whistle steam
Notice how neatly done the wiring is.
Here's a look at the underside of the PCB board, one resistor for the whistle steam and
one for the main stack. I like the way Lionel constructed this.
Notice the smoke batting, I really like it. In my last thread I mentioned how many Lionel
engines have different smoke units. I added 25 to 30 drops in this cab forward and when
I touched the batting it still was kind of dry. After I put this engine back together I ended
up putting another 10 to 15 drops and it smoked like crazy. My point is when you have a smoke
unit like this it needs a lot of fluid.
To further prove my point, notice the bottom fan blade melted just a bit. I think this is do
to not enough smoke fluid. The fan was still spinning but it was stressing to spin, so the way
I repaired this was to just snip off the one bad blade and the fan motor no longer was under stress.
Two separate reservoirs
When adding smoke fluid to this type of smoke unit, it has to travel quite a long way
to reach both reservoirs, This is why you should add a minimum of 25 to 30 drops to this
type of smoke unit .
Here's the smoke unit all put back together.