Lionel 6-18080 Mikado smoke unit

If at one time it had been run with smoke and then sat unused for many years, it's possible the wick is bone dry and no longer able to absorb smoke fluid so perhaps new wicking is needed. On the other hand the resistor responsible for making it smoke might have possibly gone bad.

To follow up on Kenn's comment, the wick could be so badly burnt it won't absorb fluid.

Have you taken a look under the hood yet??

Not yet.

I checked the resistor and it is bad, also there was no packing at all, not even the sign of burned packing.  What value resistor do I need.  I have and 11 ohm in an old smoke unit out of a diesel.  Would that work?

That unit comes stock with a 27 ohm resistor.  An 11 ohm resistor would quickly take out the smoke triac, and then you'll have two problems!

Use the proper resistor, Lionel and many dealers will have them.

Thank you

If it was advertised as unused then why was there no wick in the unit. Can’t blame Lionel on that one. 

Here is what I found.  The resistor was bad and I replaced it. Also found the gasket for the smoke unit did not have one of the die cut openings removed.  Re assembled and  tested all is well. Thanks for all the help. Bill

What, no pics!!

Glad to see you got it working again!! 

With no wick, the resistor probably just burned itself up.  Glad it was a cheap fix.

The thing I hate about that model is the 2 chuff/1 puff radio. I’m not sure why Lionel didn’t design it to puff with each chuff sound. The way it was designed you get one smoke puff per revolution, but you get two chuff sounds. This just seems like a design error

I’d tear that plunger unit out and put an MTH smoke unit in there...then you’ve got a start in case you decide later to abandon the Lionel guts and upgrade to PS3 Thing goes too fast at one speed step as it is anyway.

You can also keep the Lionel command system and use the Chuff-Generator and the Super-Chuffer II to give you 4-chuffs/rev and complete smoke unit control. A bonus is you get some nice lighting features as well.  It's not necessary to upgrade to a DCS system with an unknown future at this point.

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

You can also keep the Lionel command system and use the Chuff-Generator and the Super-Chuffer II to give you 4-chuffs/rev and complete smoke unit control. A bonus is you get some nice lighting features as well.  It's not necessary to upgrade to a DCS system with an unknown future at this point.

I’ve noticed on a number of people’s chuff generator/super chuffer upgrades that the chuff sync with driver rotation is never quite on (that is: if 4 chuffs start with the first chuff at 12 o’clock, the second should be 3 o’clock, the third at 6, the fourth at 9, and back to 12 for the next first chuff and so on with no sync loss). I’ve noticed sometimes it’s close, sometimes it’s way off - but I haven’t seen anyone get it quite right (though I haven’t actually seen one or your upgrades yet John, to be fair).

is there a way to guarantee sync of chuff generator sound and wheel rotation so the 4’chuffs land on the same spots of the drive wheel each rotation each time? Or is it all approximate guess work when syncing the generator? How does this work?

if I do a smoke upgrade I want a method that is accurate with each rotation. Even some DCS upgrades that aren’t done right have the chuff falling off the wheel rotation and it’s just awful to hear and look at.

It sometimes takes several tries at calibration to get it on the button.  As long as the gear ratio is reasonable, you can get very close.  There are about 24 stripes on the typical flywheel tape, depending on the flywheel diameter.  Assuming a gear ration of 16:1, it takes four revs of the flywheel to for 1/4 rev of the drivers.  That's 96 counts to the Chuff-Generator.  As to if every upgrade can hit that exactly, the answer is probably no, some will gradually drift as you run.  So, if they were hitting at 12,3,6,9 to start, as you travel you'd see the chuff points gradually moving around the clock.  If that's a breaking point for you, then I suggest you stick to the magnets on the driver and the reed switch to generate the chuffs.  The reason I abandoned that technique is it's a giant PITA to get the magnets to stay there, and to provide clearance for them in some locomotives.  There are hundreds of folks that have found the C-G is plenty close to 4-chuffs/rev, that's my target market.

For your reading enjoyment, here's the Chuff-Generator Installation Manual.  Here's an excerpt from that manual showing the calibration procedure.

Once the sensor operation has been verified, you can proceed to calibration of the C-G.

1. Connect a jumper cable between the two J1 pads on the C-G.
2. Apply 5VDC power to the C-G board; note that the red LED at D1 is illuminated.
3. Rotate the motor flywheel until the drive wheels have move the desired distance between chuffs. For four chuffs/rev.
   that would be ¼ of a turn of the drive wheels. For two chuffs/rev that would be ½ of a turn of the drive wheels.
4. Remove the jumper cable between the two J1 pads.
5. Remove 5VDC power from the C-G board.

This completes the calibration steps. If it is desired to recalibrate at any time, just repeat the above calibration steps.