K-line Berkshire not chuffing

If It is not smoking, the lever under the smoke unit is either jammed, bent, or broke or chuff switch may be the issue.

Take off the shell, remove the smoke unit, power the track while holding the engine due to shell off. If it moves up and down, that is great news. Look at the chuff switch and make sure it is making contact as well plus manually press down on it to see if it makes the chuff sound each time. I recommend you clean it of any oils as well.

Take the puffer out but be careful with the tension spring, and lubricate the puffer and inside the smoke unit. While you are doing all this, I would rcommend revitalizing the smoke unit and making sure the two holes in the smoke unit are clear of any batting.

The chuff switch also sometimes gets inundated with smoke fluid and stops making reliable contact.  Sometimes you can soak it with contact cleaner around the lever and get enough in to solve the issue.

If that smoke unit has a sleeve over the smoke resistor, I'd cut that off and renew the wick.  The former advice about keeping the intake holes clear is correct.  You do want the batting firmly in contact with the bottom of the smoke resistor.

That it does chuff at all is a good sign; electronically it is probably OK.

But, I have these locos, and aren't they nice? "Problem" and all, you'll love it.

Don't pull 40-car trains; the motors are small. Mine pull "layout-size" trains

all day.

I agree with all that has been said above.

The problem is likely that the smoke piston is hung up in the smoke chamber, and the spring is not returning it to the bottom of the unit when the smoke lever relaxes.

This results in no smoke, and intermittent chuff, since the same lever operates the micro switch that triggers the chuff.

Cleaning it up per above will solve the problem.

The achilles heal of the scale K-Line steamers is the plunger puffer style smoke unit.

But they are simple to service and when working, they work fine.

The element should be a 20 ohm unit, and will not likely have a sleeve over it.

Rod

WOW thank you everyone!

So I pulled the shell off,

and the smoke piston was seized,

I took needle nose pliers and pulled the piston out of the bottom of the smoke unit and with 400 grit sand paper sanded away the corrosion and oiled the piston. 

  Reassembly and,

smokes like a champ, sound and all!

Just wonderful. I love this engine the detail is the best. Out of all my great locos my k-line mike has been my go to runner, it just got replaced! Thank you all again!

BigE;

Glad it worked out for you.

Now you know what to do for non-smoking K-Line steamers.

Beautiful enigne by the way. I think you did well.

The original owner likely got fed up with the smoke not working and did not know how to fix it.

I have the SP version (with the coffin preheater) and its one of my favorites.

Rod