K-Line Mikado TMCC Smoke Unit not Working

The pistons pumping the smoke out are notorious for binding up. I added more spring tension to fix this. Just need to get an additional tension spring to ADD to the original. Also, a little vasoline on the piston helps but only after trying the spring tension first. No matter what, you will be back in there sooner or later anyway.

This all assumes that the resistor is good and not gopped up with burnt wicking.

The resistor is supposed to be 27 ohms. These also have a smoke switch opposite the program/run switch under the cab. You probably bumped it when you packed it up.

Pete

I'll go with Pete's suggestion, sounds like you have it switched off.

I have the same engine and find the moulding of the plastic piston to be poor.  It has high and low spots all over it and the fix was to use 500 grit wet dry paper and sand the piston in a circular motion until the low spots on the piston disappeared  as did the high spots and the piston looked a uniform dull finish from the sanding.  Now it works fine.  Also the smoke unit only needs about 5 drops of fluid or it over fills and smokes poor or not at all.

Very poor design.  I put in a mikes smoke unit and let it smoke steady and works super, just lost the puffing.

Its not the switch. That was the first thing I checked. The piston moves up and down fairly freely. I put a few drops of smoke fluid in it and blew into the stack while it was running. Not even a puff. I will get some sandpaper tomorrow and try that. This is strange. I used the multi meter again and measured resistance from each terminal on the switch. It read about 27 ohms through the circuit. Could it be something in the TMCC?

Yep, the most common issue is it's not programmed correctly, next comes the triac that controls the smoke.

Try programming that with AUX1-4 after setting the engine ID with the RUN/PGM switch in PGM mode.

If you still don't get smoke, measure the voltage on the smoke unit resistor to frame and see if you have power.  It'll measure about 9 volts, give or take.  If with smoke enabled, you get no voltage, and the wire is good all the way to the TMCC MB, my guess is the smoke triac.

Hey John, any chance I can program with an MTH DCS remote? Or, do I have to get my hands on a TMCC remote?

Nope, there's no equivalent of the "set" button on the dcs remote.

Gregg is right, you need a TMCC remote for this task.  I will never understand why they didn't emulate the SET button on the DCS remote!

I'll try to get my hand on one this weekend. I was planning on adding the Legacy system to my layout, whenever Lionel makes it available.

Where can I get the directions to re-program the smoke in the tmcc?

Just a thought, whenever I initialize smoke with the DCS remote, the engine speaker gives an acknowledgement signal. Also, is it common for the loco to all of the sudden not be programmed to smoke, even though it was working before?

Sometimes they forget their settings, it happens.

As noted, you need a TMCC remote to do the setting.

Set the RUN/PGM switch to PGM.

ENG, ##, SET

AUX1, 4, SET

Set the RUN/PGM switch to RUN.

The engine should be reset.

That seems simple enough.

Thanks John.

You should get smoke if you run in conventional mode regardless of what feature code has been programmed. That is the reason for the smoke switch which is needed when you can't use Aux1 8.

Pete

Thanks Pete. I'll give that a try tomorrow before I bother with the reprogramming. BTW, will the new cab1L work with an old TMCC base?

Nope, the CAB1L works with the BASE1L or the Legacy base.

Not getting any smoke production running conventional. Now what?

Thanks

It sounds like the triac on the R2LC might be bad. Have you checked for 9v on the hot side of the resistor? If you have another TMCC engine you could try swapping the R2LCs. That would help determine where the problem is. If you can confirm its the triac, they can be replaced if you are careful. The smoke triac is the large one next to the 4 smaller ones.

https://ogrforum.com/t...wn-triacs-on-r2lc-08

Pete

I received my cab-1 today and reset the engine. It did the trick. Started smoking right away. Thanks John.

If the smoke output is programmed for something like strobe, you don't get much, if any, smoke.

Glad it was a simple fix.