How many of you have converted your postwar from pellet to liquid smokers??

Hi Jeff, I updated most of my post war locomotives over to the new liquid type smoke unit.  This was some years ago before I found Mega-Steam or the super Lionel smoke fluid.  Even without these new smoke fluids the overall smoking of the locomotives improved and updating the locomotives was easy.

TEX

Steve

Steve - Would you say your loco's smoke similar to the video?

Jeff, to be honest, I don't know.  I don't have the post war locomotives I upgraded any more and I never tested them with the new smoke fluids.  But I remember just the upgrade to new liquid smoke unit did improve smoke.  Another thing, if I had it to do over again I would enlarge the "air hole" at bottom of smoke chamber to increase air flow through smoke unit.  I believe someone suggested doing this and improved his smoke. 

The other thing is what liquid smoke unit did this guy on youtube install.  It may be a sluth or other type.   

TEX

Steve

Thanks Steve, I recently grabbed my first bottle of JT's. 

I don't know why one would change the smoke unit from pellet to liquid.  They are nearly identical.  They both have a heater, they both have a wicking material (although the material in the pellet unit was used for a different purpose, but it still fulfills the purpose of a wick) and they have a chamber for the fluid and a puffing unit. 

Granted, some new units can smoke better, but the smoke output of the pellet types can be vastly improved by reducing the number of windings on the heater element.

Earl

Earl - You sound as if you speak from experience on reducing the number of windings on the heater element.  Is there a specific number you would recommend to remove??

I converted my postwar to liquid just because its more readily available.  And that JTs Megasteam is pretty awesome stuff!

My personal experience has been that the amount of smoke put out by a pellet driven smoke unit will depend on the individual locomotive.  I have some post-war pellet types which produce prodigious amounts of smoke while others which are exactly the same engine produce less.  The ones that were poor smokers I converted to liquid units and now they smoke fine.  Generally speaking I think liquid smoke units are better but if a pellet unit is working good I leave it alone.  I love the original stuff.  

You can use fluid in a pellet unit. Don't bother converting.  It's also a lot harder to burn a pellet unit out by running it dry.  The only thing I did to my PW units for fluid was to replace the original insulation material with some fiberglass insulation (the pink stuff).  Works fine for me.

I converted one here, it smoked a lot better with fluid after the conversion.  While you can use liquid in the pellet types, I didn't get that much smoke.  One benefit of the pellet types is they are not prone to scorch the wick, since there is none.

Doesn't make any difference to a "pellet" smoke unit if a liquid is used. The resistor heating element in the smoke unit doesn't care: a pellet melts and becomes a liquid before it becomes a vapor. A liquid such as MegaSteam simply has a lower point at which it becomes a vapor and thus "smokes" at a lower temperature. It can be used in postwar pellet style smoke units without any ill effects. And there's supposed to be a wick material underneath the wire-wound ceramic core of pellet style smoke units.

Well that answers that!  Thanks for the info C. W.

J White

Like some posted it must have something to do with the loco.  My 2018 doesn't come near the smoke in your video.

Thank You Earl!

Some folks might not be aware that Greenberg's Repair and Operating Manual for Lionel Trains is a collection of material from the original Lionel Corporation's service station manual, bulletins, and original Lionel Corporation instruction sheets.

Prior to the Greenberg version, an edition was put out by Aurotec. I have never done a comparison, they appear to be the same.

There may also be a soft cover version.

Folks interested in doing their own maintenace would do well to obtain a copy. There is a lot of good information.

The only one's I've changed are the ones I get with a burned out/damaged coil. A couple drops of fluid works as good as a pellet.

Just keep in mind, once you either convert or use a modern liquid in an original smoke unit, you will likely be unable to recover the original smoke pellet scent.  I have one postwar steamer which has never "seen" liquid and whose scent is as I remember it from the "old days".  I purposely keep it this way for that reason.

The "old days" for me was a Lionel Scout, no smoke, no whistle, no worries!!