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Here's why I ask. Back when TMCC was the big dog, Mike Reagan posted a video on making improvements to diesel TMCC smoke units. Basically:

1) Cut the sock off the resistor.

2) Bend the resistor into the bowl.

3) Drill the air inlet hole larger.

As a car guy #3 tweaked my interest. Old hot rodders theme, more air in more air out. In our case, more air in more smoke out. I popped the shell off my SF F3 set #85186 and here's the pic.

SF Smoke Unit

The hole on the left is the outlet to the smoke funnel. It's a fixed size to hold the funnel so nothing can be done there. The smaller hole on the right is the air coming in. It certainly appears the air inlet could be made bigger since the trace is a good distance away.

Thoughts?

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  • SF Smoke Unit
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Short answer - no need to tweak them.  A lot of people adjusted the TMCC smoke units because of the very low output of smoke.  I had several TMCC engines where you struggled to see anything coming out of the stack.  After doing the mods, it greatly improved the smoke.

With all my legacy engines, you have 3 levels of smoke.  I have tried high, ONCE, on my son's visionline Big boy.  It fogged the room with just one pass of the layout.  I normally run in low or medium at most.  I have no need to modify the legacy smoke units.

The only issue I have ever read was to adjust the thermal sensor.  In some early legacy smoke units, the thermal sensor was too close to the heater so not much smoke was produced.  Just slightly bending the sensor away from the heater fixed the problem.

No need to fix something that isn't broken.

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