Has anyone installed a "fancy" smoke unit in the post war locos? I put the traditional 5 dollar thermistor mod in my 2026 and while it works, its sub par for my liking. I would like to put a more modern smoke unit in as a trial. Has anybody else done it? I would like to make it "chuff". I think that would be the hardest part
I think you could use a Lionel fan driven unit. The chuffing would be the difficult part as you have to mount a reed switch somewhere to activate it. You can just wire it so it just puts out a constant stream though too.
What's the cost of a fan driven unit from either lionel or mth? I'm a 30 minute drive from mth so I could easily pick one up from them. As for mounting a switch I could do it the same way the chuff's are read in the ERR sound upgrade kits by mounting a magnet to a truck. I think the key will be what the cost of a smoke unit is....... I'm not looking to dump 100 bucks or so on just the smoke unit
Looking at a thread on another forum with the same subject, the MTH unit will be a pain to install. The lionel has all the circuitry needed built in and you just need to wire it to track power. For chuffing, you wire the switch into one of the power leads. The MTH uses some external board.
Goto my web site click on videos, and then smoke repair. This is a modified lionel smoke unit in a Williams turbine. I don't think it will fit in a 2026 without extreme modification.
MTH protosounds smoke units are fairly large, they have the electronic doodads to convert AC track power to DC to power the smoke fan. The advantage is that they work on track power. Protosounds 2.0 smoke units are designed to use 6 volts from the circuit boards, DC. This would require some fancy circuitry to use them in a postwar loco. Personally, I prefer the postwar smoke units, either pill type or liquid conversion. A properly functioning postwar smoke unit is more than adequate for a home layout, MTH smoke units can fog up a good sized basement layout in short order.
I have installed MTH smoke units in both steam and diesels. The tricky part is whether it will fit inside the boiler of the steamer. Diesels are usually not a problem. As was stated above, you need the pre-PS2 smoke unit, which is powered by track power. PS-2 units have no electronics as they are controllled directly from the PS-2 board. You can use a micro switch or magnetic reed switch triggered by a driver to pulse power to the fan motor to create the chuff effect. Most K-Line engines used a double lobe cam on the front drivers to operate a plunger style smoke unit. This makes it much easier to convert them to an MTH unit.
I bought Box Car Bill's unit. Very happy with it. I don't think it would be worth the trouble to try to make it fit most postwar engines. I put one in a Wlliams 671. Rob
Unless you convert your engine to a system such as TMCC the chuffing option is useless. In order to chuff a fan driven unit and get any good results the unit has to have 3/4 to full track power at all times. That means you need to be able to throttle your engine at slow speeds and keep 3/4 to full power going to the smoke unit constantly. They make a chuff switch that can be put on these units. Heres a Lionel baby berk that I put a fan unit in. I put a chuff switch in it but then took the chuuf back out because I run it conventional and you have to run the engine wide open to keep the unit hot so it will chuff like it should. I just let her smoke constant and it smokes good at slow speeds. Thomas
The berk boiler has plenty of room compared to most post war engines because the berk has a small can motor and a small board that can easily be repositioned for smoke unit fitting unlike the post war engines that have the bulky motors and e units. This unit is a Lionel 8057 with many mods. This one has a super hot element,new improved wicking material,modified the air flow and I changed the fan motor out in favor of a high out put fan. If you watch the video it looks like if you leaned your head over the smoke stack it would blow your hat off. The reason for the high output fan is'nt for blowing a lot of smoke but rather to circulate mass air to keep the element from over heating. Thomas
Really want to do this in my baby berk, I think someone could make some money creating a kit for PE and all the baby berks out there. Here's a nice tutorial on doing it.
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