ALSUQ (Another Lionel Smoke Unit Question)

Check the screws for the smoke resistor, if they're loose you might see a problem with smoke.  Have you increased the smoke volume to MAX on the CAB2?

However, I read around 6VDC across a Legacy smoke unit with the engine not moving.  If the wiring is intact, I'd be thinking board issue.

Did the main smoke work after you replaced the RCMC & the harness a year ago?

Do the checks as John outlined above …….If all ok, I’d open the smoke unit & look at the thermistors. If they’re gapped too far away from the heating resistor, It never gets a chance to do its job. I think this is the no.1 suspect in RCMC deaths, along with the occasional Cannon motor suicide mission. If you open up the smoke unit and see alot of burned up stuff, This could be a suspect that the smoke drive on the RCMC has croaked,….do verify your paths before condemnation. I’ve seen RCMC’s lose the ability to smoke, and survive being able to run, and I’ve seen them croak altogether because of overly toasted smoke units.

Pat

I don't remember since it's been over a year but I think I never was able to test if it smoked on the new board because the wiring harness broke and then I ordered a new one and the engine got parked and now here we are.  I able to get smoke on my test bench with a 5 volt power supply hooked up to the blower and the resistor.  When I put it back in the engine still only 0.5 volts going to the resistor, motor running.  I guess the next step would be to switch the whistle smoke and main smoke where they plug into the RCMC and see what happens.

On a side note--when whistle smoke is on is the heater always running?  And if so can I run both heating elements off the whistle smoke harness or is that too much draw?

The RCMC has no problem managing two smoke units, it's normal for the whistle steam to maintain minimal heat on the smoke resistor all the time.  This allows the whistle to immediately smoke without a delay to heat up the resistor.

I swap the two smoke plugs all the time for a quick test.  That's only after I make SURE there are no shorts internally in the smoke unit.

If it's running OK on my bench setup can I assume no shorts?  And you're saying I can splice into the line going to the whistle smoke heater and run a line to the main smoke heater?

Swapped the wiring where they plug into the RCMC.  Whistle smoke out of the front unit but nothing out of the whistle smoke unit.  I'm leaning towards a bad board.

@7thing3 posted:

Swapped the wiring where they plug into the RCMC.  Whistle smoke out of the front unit but nothing out of the whistle smoke unit.  I'm leaning towards a bad board.

So either one of two things happening here, …..either your smoke unit killed the main RCMC smoke output, again, I’d open it up & look around, or it’s possible Lionel didn’t program your new board correctly. This past year, I’ve had nothing but trouble with pre-programmed RCMC’s & LCP2’s sent to me with programming errors,……99% of the time, it’s a feature that doesn’t work. So I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the case for you. Still, I’d verify. I had one RCMC sent to me that everything actually worked, but the smoke output was so violent, I knew for sure it would’ve killed the board sooner than later. Granted, they’ve replaced every board I had an issue with, ( except for one LCP2 ) and eventually they got it right……out of the 20 some odd Legacy board failures I’ve had since late summer, well over half had to go back,…..that’s not good odds….

Pat

@harmonyards posted:

So either one of two things happening here, …..either your smoke unit killed the main RCMC smoke output, again, I’d open it up & look around, or it’s possible Lionel didn’t program your new board correctly. This past year, I’ve had nothing but trouble with pre-programmed RCMC’s & LCP2’s sent to me with programming errors,……99% of the time, it’s a feature that doesn’t work. So I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the case for you. Still, I’d verify. I had one RCMC sent to me that everything actually worked, but the smoke output was so violent, I knew for sure it would’ve killed the board sooner than later. Granted, they’ve replaced every board I had an issue with, ( except for one LCP2 ) and eventually they got it right……out of the 20 some odd Legacy board failures I’ve had since late summer, well over half had to go back,…..that’s not good odds….

Pat

Pat, I just got a board from Lionel.  Worked seemingly fine on my tester, but it didn't work at all in an engine.  I fooled around for over an hour before I decided to just try a spare diesel board I had in the drawer.  The spare fired right up in the engine and on the tester.

I still haven't figured out what oddball failure the bad RCMC has.  I can run it on the tester and just plug a known good smoke unit into the main smoke port and the board goes into apoplexy with a bunch of lights on and no control!  Remove it and reconnect the tester to the smoke port and all is well.  Since the test set has the correct 8 ohm smoke resistor load and a real fan motor, I can't imagine how it knows it's connected to something different when I connect the smoke unit, should be an identical load!  I did notice the board had heatsink compound on the bridge, so it's a used board, probably from someone that couldn't get it working!

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

Pat, I just got a board from Lionel.  Worked seemingly fine on my tester, but it didn't work at all in an engine.  I fooled around for over an hour before I decided to just try a spare diesel board I had in the drawer.  The spare fired right up in the engine and on the tester.

I still haven't figured out what oddball failure the bad RCMC has.  I can run it on the tester and just plug a known good smoke unit into the main smoke port and the board goes into apoplexy with a bunch of lights on and no control!  Remove it and reconnect the tester to the smoke port and all is well.  Since the test set has the correct 8 ohm smoke resistor load and a real fan motor, I can't imagine how it knows it's connected to something different when I connect the smoke unit, should be an identical load!  I did notice the board had heatsink compound on the bridge, so it's a used board, probably from someone that couldn't get it working!

Personally, I feel they have an issue that’s directly related to smoke features. The engine shows up here at my shop deader than a door nail, RCMC croaked. No visible signs of environmental damage. Open up the smoke units, and it’s BBQ City. …..The only thing I have to go on is in every case, the thermistor is a mile away from the heating resistor……What else can we do??…rebuild the smoke unit, adjust the thermistor to what we think should be adequate, put in a new RCMC ( pray it works first )  and make sure the smoke outputs are sufficient enough to be a crowd pleaser, but not a fire breathing dragon……no pun intended, but the only smoking gun is the smoke units …..I can’t believe every newer Legacy engine I see has been nuked by an antique ZW …..ya know??….I have quite the stack of dead RCMCs……

Pat

@harmonyards posted:

Personally, I feel they have an issue that’s directly related to smoke features. The engine shows up here at my shop deader than a door nail, RCMC croaked. No visible signs of environmental damage. Open up the smoke units, and it’s BBQ City. …..The only thing I have to go on is in every case, the thermistor is a mile away from the heating resistor……What else can we do??…rebuild the smoke unit, adjust the thermistor to what we think should be adequate, put in a new RCMC ( pray it works first )  and make sure the smoke outputs are sufficient enough to be a crowd pleaser, but not a fire breathing dragon……no pun intended, but the only smoking gun is the smoke units …..I can’t believe every newer Legacy engine I see has been nuked by an antique ZW …..ya know??….I have quite the stack of dead RCMCs……

Pat

The dangers of PW transformers is overblown.  Yes, you should have a better circuit breaker than most PW transformers have, but that indeed doesn't account for most failures.

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

The dangers of PW transformers is overblown.  Yes, you should have a better circuit breaker than most PW transformers have, but that indeed doesn't account for most failures.

Agreed, ….unless these guys are welding them to the rails, that ain’t the problem…….Nuked smoke units is the only evidence left behind after a death. …..to be fair, I’ve seen smoke units that look like they’ve been set a fire, and yet the RCMC survived ……..go figure!….

Pat

You should also check the tether connection cables...sometimes one of the wires becomes dislodged from its casing and is not making a solid connection when it is plugged in.  That was a culprit for me a few months ago.

@Gregcz1 posted:

You should also check the tether connection cables...sometimes one of the wires becomes dislodged from its casing and is not making a solid connection when it is plugged in.  That was a culprit for me a few months ago.

The tether?  This is the smoke unit that is connected to the RCMC in the locomotive.  There's no "tether" involved, maybe the smoke unit cable, it's a direct run from the smoke unit to the RCMC.

Yes, John...thank you for the correction...the cables that make the connections are what I speaking.  Forgive me for the incorrect use of the word.

Greg

No problem, just wanted to make sure we were all on the same page.