No Smoke out of MTH Triplex

Try preforming a factory reset. If that doesn't fix it, id start fishing inside.

I did try a factory reset, had no effect.

If it's never had smoke unit on before, it does need a lot of fluid the first time. However, you should see something at least. I would not use it anymore until someone looks at it. I've had brand new ones plugged up where the wick was over packed and blocked the smoke out of the stack.

 So did you see any smoke vapor when you look in the hole? Can you place a soft object ( like a small zip tie end) down the hole to make sure it's not blocked by the wick? Do you feel comfortable taking it apart?

 There are a lot of good techs here on the forum that could take a look at it for you. Are you near MTH?

There might be a air bubble in the unit.  Give it a light blow of air down the stack.  Might work?  If not probably a element is not working?  Hope this helps.

Did you add fluid?  G

Well, it's pretty odd if NEITHER smoke unit on this model is working. The query above about adding smoke fluid (to both units) is obviously right. Also I am sure that you have adjusted the smoke volume in DCS to MAX to test the output.

That said, my Triplex PS2 version is the only MTH engine I have that has ever given me smoke unit troubles. The front unit for the engine stack was misaligned with the stack such that the smoke was coming out from under the boiler. The tender unit eventually failed for some reason I was never able to ascertain and had to be replaced.

If the units are not defective then with priming and clearing any air blockage you should see them both working within just a few seconds of startup. Both smoke units of mine are on at idle and produce prodigious amounts of smoke. I'm not aware of any change in MTH steam engine settings as between PS2 and PS3 that would result in different behavior.

You may want to flash the hardware table from the website into this model. IIRC, that model had some weak smoke output in some models, which was improved with an updated hardware table.

Note: the hardware table is _in_ the zipfile you download from that link, labeled: 

P152_F_TRIPLEX_ALL151123a-cpf.zip

If you've added smoke fluid, and gave the smoke heater resistors sufficient time to warm up, this might be the issue.

Took it down to the local authorized MTH repair technician.  Turns out someone forgot to solder the ground wire for smoke resistors!  After he fixed that issue, everything now works great!

Thanks for the help.

Lionel16 posted:

Took it down to the local authorized MTH repair technician.  Turns out someone forgot to solder the ground wire for smoke resistors!  After he fixed that issue, everything now works great!

Huh? Well, this is a very complicated engine assembly so maybe it's not surprising that something got missed out. 

Not just out of morbid curiosity but to educate myself I'd be interested to know where the relevant ground wire connection is - on the main PS board or the smoke units themselves? There have been diagrams of PS2/3 boards posted on this forum before but I can't track them down.

Anyway good to know this very impressive model is back up and smokin' .