Lionel Smoke units

Your H-7 and EM-1 use 6101154130, your Y-6 uses 6108057211.  Your shark should use the 6101154130 also.    Try to find them from dealers who advertise on the forum.  If you have no luck with them, hit my email.  The recent locomotives you have are excellent smokers unless you run conventional.   The Lionel smoke unit has only one heating element.  The newer Legacy RCMC boards do a fantastic job with these.   Just about any Lionel smoke unit can benefit greatly by taking out the nasty fiberglass pad and installing shredded (Reaganized) rope wicking.  That part is 691SMKP008.  Your 3 blinks would be the smoke fan motor.  Easy to change and cheap to buy.

I had the conversation with Charlie Ro about how good smoke fan motors have been recently.   

What Marty said.  

There was a run of bad smoke motors a couple years back for Lionel Legacy, and the 3-blinks were a common complaint.  That seems to have run it's course, I haven't seen one lately.  I still have several locomotives that I have to install the new smoke motors, that has to wait until I move.

Marty & John,

Thanks for the reply. I run in Legacy mode and when working, all the locomotives were very good smokers. If the engine runs fine otherwise I've been just running with smoke off. Now that I have multiple engines with fan issues, I think I'll bite the bullet and start replacing the motors. I'll probably start with the Shark to build a little confidence.

Thanks for the part numbers Marty and as suggested, I'll check the forum first.

Joe

I am very happy the quality of the motors has improved.   I have to time frame the better motors about two years to present.  Any time I put a fan motor in an engine I always put a small drop of oil on the motor output shaft.  On thing on testing motors, you can have a 3 blinker and hit it with a 9V battery and many times get it to turn.  In the past, John talked about a 5V power supply to test the motors.  If 5V spins your motor, you might have something else going on.

The above information is the same with MTH fan motors.  MTH has had some great luck with recent smoke fan motors.  As train guys/gals, we are lucky to have Dean Brasseur at Lionel and Jason Wenzel at MTH to keep an eye on quality.

I have not mastered the care and feeding of Lionel smoke units; have sent 3 locomotives back to Lionel for smoke unit problems.  I have looked at the following videos to see what repairing a smoke unit looks like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRcpFRtA6IY
https://youtu.be/1asUWbJtfok

From what you've said, it sounds like all of my engines fall into that before the past 2 year period. Frustrating, but I hope just an easy fix and inexpensive in all cases.
I have 2 more engines I forgot about and I think the issue is the fan motor also.

JLC C&O TMCC Allegheny #1650 SKU: 6-38081

Lionel Norfolk & Western J # 611 (Pre Legacy - TMCC Railsounds 5.0) SKU: 6-38095. Upgraded to a Super Chuffer by John about 3 years ago and smoked great for a period of time. I rotated it off the layout for over a year and unfortunately hasn’t chuffed since. Smoke does slowly filter out as it heats up but not with any kind of chuffing action. (I plan on opening this one up to see what I can see.)

Marty,
Any chance you would know the motor # for these 2 engines? Any particular dealer I should try for these replacements?

Thanks again for all the help!

Joe

Joe,  before you put your thoughts into the fan motor, I would tear it down and see where you are at.  Many people have motors but to get a new one go to an authorized Lionel Dealer.    Both Lionel fan motors can be swapped out in most cases.  At this point in time, Lionel is doing warranty work.  Your older engines will do great if you remove the covering on the heater.  Any Lionel fan driven smoke unit can usually be made to smoke very good.

Marty,

Thanks for the advice!

Joe