Havent seen a Smoke Unit this Bad....

That thing is in great shape compared to some I’ve seen!…..it’s almost mint!…..wait till you see one melt the sides of the housings, melt the funnel, and char the batting so bad it’s nothing but ash, ……consider replacing the well done smoke resistors, and move the thermistors closer to the resistors,….the thermistors ( the little pinkish/orange dudes )  are the heat sensors …..when they build that lump of junk, they mash the thermistors too far away from the resistor to do any good,…..

Pat

Way ahead of ya @harmonyards. Already scoped out Lionel Parts and getting ready to place an order.

Melted housing? Melted funnel? That's insane!

There's no saving the resistors. And every post I've read re. the resistors recommend replacing them with the 8 ohm versions.

I need to clean up the "gunk" (technical term) too. It's like glue. I'm think Iso Alcohol and a lot of Q Tips.....

Gotta test the fans too. The blades look pretty good...now if they only spin!

Precisely why I only run smoke for brief periods,  and on the lowest setting possible to produce a reasonable effect.

@RickO posted:

Precisely why I only run smoke for brief periods,  and on the lowest setting possible to produce a reasonable effect.

Negative Ghost Rider, they put smoke units on this earth to please us!….they shall be allowed to fulfill their destiny!…..😉

Pat

Hallelujah Brotha!

Sad to say, yes I have seen them much worse!  When the smoke regulator lets go in TMCC or early Legacy, instead of 6-8 watts of power in the smoke unit, it gets around 40 watts.  Great smoke for about 30 seconds, and then the meltdown begins!  However, I can usually save the diecast smoke fluid reservoir.

Just tested the motors applying 5VDC. The Whistle Steam side motor worked , the stack side motor is locked up solid; won't budge even by g-e-n-t-l-y nudging the impeller.

Order already placed with Lionel Parts. Ordered 4 traction tires, 3 resistors, 2 motors, 1 gasket, 1 wick and a Partridge in a Pear Tree!

The preformed wick "block" NA; had to go with rope wick.

Hey John....

I just noticed....you're an ERR dealer too?

Replacing all the smoke unit parts will bring it back to life but if there is an electronic problem wouldn’t it happen all over again? How do you check for that?

@romiller49....

I had thought of that, but I had to start somewhere. And getting the smoke unit up to snuff would in my mind, be the logical place to start.

The smoke unit in this engine is not like others covered in the forum. The smoke unit circuit is really basic and only has the resistors, the thermistors and the 2 motors....no other electronic components.

There is a main board in the engine that the smoke unit connects to. If there's something fishy with that board, I'll have get some help and direction about what to check for.

As I mentioned earlier, the Whistle Steam does work (God knows how considering the condition its in). To me that's a good sign.

Hi the main thing to remember is what Pat had told you! The thermistors ( the little pinkish/orange dudes )  are the heat sensors …..when they build that lump of junk, they mash the thermistors too far away from the resistor to do any good! so make sure when you've installed the sensor s close to the resistor or it will overheat again and you'll be doing the job all over again! Alan

What engine are you working on Junior?….one point that John makes is a bad reg,…they can go full bore retard, and pump all the power to the resistors,….usually when that does happen, they become fire breathing monsters, …..albeit short lived…..

Pat

@Junior posted:

I just noticed....you're an ERR dealer too?

Yep.

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

Yep.

That's EXCELLENT....you have a new Customer!

@harmonyards posted:

What engine are you working on Junior?….one point that John makes is a bad reg,…they can go full bore retard, and pump all the power to the resistors,….usually when that does happen, they become fire breathing monsters, …..albeit short lived…..

Pat

Hey Pat...

This is a Lionmaster Challenger 6-82694. My layout uses 072 and 054 curves so I'm restricted to Lionmaster for being able to run the longer engines.

And I'm  totally hooked on Whistle Steam. IMHO, it's one of Lionel's greatest innovations.

@Alan Mancus posted:

Hi the main thing to remember is what Pat had told you! The thermistors ( the little pinkish/orange dudes )  are the heat sensors …..when they build that lump of junk, they mash the thermistors too far away from the resistor to do any good! so make sure when you've installed the sensor s close to the resistor or it will overheat again and you'll be doing the job all over again! Alan

Oh yeah.....Thanks for the reminder Alan. I'll be posting pics once I get the parts from Lionel.

@RickO posted:

Precisely why I only run smoke for brief periods,  and on the lowest setting possible to produce a reasonable effect.

Rick....I owe you a response from another/different post of mine. I was trying to figure out how the smoke unit was mounted in the engine shell.

There's a front bracket that screws to the smoke unit and the engine shell. I removed the bracket but the smoke unit was still solid in the shell.

The smoke unit has a friction fit with the shell's stack. Once I nudged the unit it popped loose from the shell.....a lot less complicated that I thought it might be!

Having received the smoke unit parts a few months ago, I finally have time to work on the smoke unit. I do have a question though regarding removal of the resistors from the smoke unit circuit board.

Is there some trick to getting the resistors off the smoke unit board? I tried heating up the wire leads with my soldering iron (at what appears to be the soldering pad) but the leads aren't budging. Has anyone encountered this problem?

@Junior posted:

Is there some trick to getting the resistors off the smoke unit board? I tried heating up the wire leads with my soldering iron (at what appears to be the soldering pad) but the leads aren't budging. Has anyone encountered this problem?

They use higher temperature solder on those.  I clean the solder joint throughly and then I turn up the soldering iron to 650F and put a spot of solder on the tip to conduct heat to the joint.  You can also cut the resistor free at the resistor body and clip some forceps on it to yank it out.

Seen a melted one before!!! Legacy Bigboy. Obviously I put new wick material in the smoke unit in the first picture, but the fan impeller was melted and could not even rotate.

Thanks @gunrunnerjohn...that did the trick!

Heat and cleanliness, the silver bullet for soldering.

I'd replace those impellers as well...

It can get bad.  I fired up one of my first PW engines, a 682.   It smoked well and then the smell hit, previous owner had used motor oil in it.   Had to dig out the packing, clean, clean, clean and replace the resistor.   Did it once I got the house aired out and livable again.

@VHubbard..

OOOOOH! Motor oil?!! Surprised it didn't catch on fire!

I bought my engine used from a "reputable" seller. Wow...it was in sad shape.

I guess I was still lucky because it did run. As I started tearing into it, the fact became obvious someone else worked on this engine before but didn't know what they were doing.

All 6 screws that attached the boiler to the frame were hand tight at most. One of the drive rods was attached to the wheel 180 degrees out of sync. And I'm not sure how this happened, but one of the 4-40 5/16" screws (see below) that attaches the motor to the drive wheel frame from underneath was somehow "skewed"? I have NO idea someone could do that! I discovered this when I was working to determine why the "swing" of the front set of drive wheels was more to the right side than to the left. This screw was somehow acting as an offset; similar to a cam adjustment. Weird!

But....it's almost all back together now. I just need to replace all the traction tires and the engine will be ready to go.

I have to mention...these engines are an amazing feat of engineering in and of themselves. I marvel at how Lionel is able to fit all this "stuff" into these steam engine bodies and still keep the engine serviceable. It is quite the puzzle.

Got the engine all buttoned up and thought "Cr@p! I never tested the thermistors!".

@harmonyards and @gunrunnerjohn...2 questions I'm hoping you might offer your input on...

1. In situations like with this engine (where the smoke unit was pretty well cooked), do thermistors have a high chance of failure? I didn't test them but will open up the smoke unit again and at least check them. I think I can test them using my soldering iron as a heat source.

2. How close should the thermistor be to the resistors? Are we talking a 1/4 inch? A 1/8 inch? My guess is, the further the thermistors are from the resistors, the hotter the resistors will get (assuming the thermistors work the way I think they work).

Should've asked these questions earlier.....excitement over took me putting the engine back together again.

I orient the thermistors to be parallel with the smoke unit perpendicular to the PCB.  It's very hard to actually test the thermistors and see the effect as they don't work like you'd expect them to.  They're only used to control the initial boost voltage that is used to quickly heat the smoke unit, in normal operation they're not referenced.  This information comes from the guy that designed the board.  My observation has been if they're too close to the smoke resistor that it takes longer for the smoke unit to produce full smoke, but after that they don't seem to have an effect.

Wow! I would've never guess they worked in that fashion.

As always....great info.

Thanks again!

I've had luck spacing the thermistors a few mm to 1/8" away from the resistor. Further than 1/8" and the units tend to run too hot.

Given the description of the thermistor operation I got from Jon Z, I'm not sure how the smoke unit could run too hot for an extended period, apparently it's only use initially for pre-heating control.

Hi All...

I've owed everyone an update on the smoke unit repair on my Challenger for quite a while.

To make a rather long story short; it's fixed and working. The rebuild was a success.

Well that's a beautiful thing! Well Done!

Lookin' good, glad it was a positive outcome.

Thanks @gunrunnerjohn and @BillYo414! It's been a time consuming process and I learned quite a bit going through the repair process.

I gotta give Thanks to everyone on this thread for all the help, guidance and advice. It's greatly appreciated.