Smoke unit replacement

https://ogrforum.com/...-unit-691-691-ssmu-f

No reason on the planet to replace the smoke unit for simple maintenance issues, you'll just be doing the same thing soon with the replacement.

I would replace the smoke resistor, that one has the 6 ohm resistor, Lionel recommends replacing that with the 8 ohm resistor as the 6 ohm was taking out the smoke regulator module prematurely.

I suggest buying real smoke wick and a smoke resistor.  If you're getting no heat to the smoke unit, you may have to replace the smoke regulator, it could have crapped out.  It actually doesn't look like the picture below, it's in a small heatshrink encased package.

gunrunnerjohn posted:

No reason on the planet to replace the smoke unit for simple maintenance issues, you'll just be doing the same thing soon with the replacement.

I would replace the smoke resistor, that one has the 6 ohm resistor, Lionel recommends replacing that with the 8 ohm resistor as the 6 ohm was taking out the smoke regulator module prematurely.

I suggest buying real smoke wick and a smoke resistor.  If you're getting no heat to the smoke unit, you may have to replace the smoke regulator, it could have crapped out.  It actually doesn't look like the picture below, it's in a small heatshrink encased package.

Thanks for your feedback John.  Always appreciate your insight.  Took it apart again and ordered the parts, the 8 ohm resistor and wick as you recommended. I am not as skilled as you but should be able to do the repair. Thanks again.

Bringing this back up as I have a TMCC 6-11107 cab forward and lionel recommends the same regulator pictured above to replace. The smoke suddenly stopped working but the fan is still doing its thing. Also the resistor shows about 6 ohms so it is also good. Any ideas where to get a replacement? Lionel's site says its obsolete. Thanks

You can no longer get the regulators, Lionel has discontinued offering them.  They declared all the TMCC and early modular Legacy electronics as obsolete and removed them from the website.  That was an extremely low class move!

The way to fix the smoke is to rewire it for unregulated operation and change the resistor to a value to a 2 watt wirewound resistor from 20 to 27 ohms.

For your reference, here's a Motherboard Connections R1.31.pdf, your engine motherboard is a 691-PCB1-10D, it's on page three.

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

The way to fix the smoke is to rewire it for unregulated operation and change the resistor to a value to a 2 watt wirewound resistor from 20 to 27 ohms.

I think your going to be doing alot of these.

I have a scale PE berk from the second legacy run that occasionally shuts off on its own.

I changed the resistor to an 8 ohm but I think the damage was already done.

Hey thanks a ton for the update! That's awful I can't get the regulator considering I ran the smoke for a total of 5 minutes and the engine was NIB. Is there any way to replace a failed subcomponent on the reg board? I don't want to start hacking the wiring to make the smoke unit run on track power, although I have plenty of 5W 20 ohm resistors. Thanks again for your help.

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

You can no longer get the regulators, Lionel has discontinued offering them.  They declared all the TMCC and early modular Legacy electronics as obsolete and removed them from the website.  That was an extremely low class move!

I thought the "rumor" was.

There was going to be some type of a formal announcement of/by the new parts vendor?

It really makes one start to rethink ones pre-orders.

Who's to say they won't dump the parts for locos delivered next week in 8 or 10 years?

Someone should have kept an eye on that dumpster behind the Concord headquarters.

A 5W resistor is much too large.  However, if you have the typical square ceramic 5W resistor, there lurks inside a perfect 2W smoke resistor, you just need a vise and safety glasses.

I have tinkered with the smoke regulators, but I've only been about 1 of 3 in repairing them, it just wasn't worth the trouble.  Now that Lionel had deep sixed them, it may be a useful exercise.  Truthfully, I prefer getting rid of it as it's a trivial wiring exercise, and I never have to deal with the regulator again.  They were always flaky, and a constant failure item.

@RickO posted:

I think your going to be doing alot of these.

I have a scale PE berk from the second legacy run that occasionally shuts off on its own.

I changed the resistor to an 8 ohm but I think the damage was already done.

Rick, the early Legacy models are more problematic!  Since the smoke output of the Legacy R4LC is not controlled by the smoke controls, you can't do what you can do with TMCC and just rewire around the regulator, there's no command smoke control!

@RickO posted:

I thought the "rumor" was.

There was going to be some type of a formal announcement of/by the new parts vendor?

It really makes one start to rethink ones pre-orders.

Who's to say they won't dump the parts for locos delivered next week in 8 or 10 years?

Someone should have kept an eye on that dumpster behind the Concord headquarters.

Well, rumors are just that, rumors.  There has been no official word!  I know I'm giving more thought to what I buy nowadays.

As far as them dumping the parts, based on this action, I'd say in a few years it's entirely reasonable to assume they'll do a similar dump of the early RCMC boards and the like now that they've transitioned to the Legacy/LC+ 2.0 combined board.  They've already demonstrated they don't give a hoot about existing customers.

Based on this it seems like I can just cut out the regulator, jumper pins 2 and 3 on the smoke unit to get track positive to the heater, and replace the resistor (I have the ceramic 5W 20 ohm shown above). That seem right?

Well, you do have to wire the smoke heater to pins 5-6 of the R2LC, that output is no in the picture or your description.  Also, note that the 5W resistor has to be "cracked" to expose the internal wirewound resistor, you won't fit that big square block into the smoke unit.

This is the exact resistor I "crack" for 20 ohm smoke resistors: Yageo SQP500JB-20R, and if you want 27 ohm smoke resistors, use this one: Yageo SQP500JB-27R

I just put them diagonally in the vise and squeeze enough to crack the ceramic, it drops away and you have your smoke resistor.  At the rate I go through them, it saves quite a bit of money.

I wish Lionel would 'man up' and let us know via this forum what happened to the electronic parts. Did they sell to a third party and will be on the market again, or were they thrown away. ( I find it hard to believe they would just throw them in a dumpster, like throwing money away.)

You and me both Chuck!  What a bummer they chose to simply orphan tens of thousands of locomotives at the stroke of a pen!  You know if the parts ever do surface that they'll cost lots more than they did previously!

The cynic in me still wonders if that was a move to force people to buy new stuff and they really did just dump them!

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

You and me both Chuck!  What a bummer they chose to simply orphan tens of thousands of locomotives at the stroke of a pen!  You know if the parts ever do surface that they'll cost lots more than they did previously!

I agree.  I too, am looking at this differently.  I have way too much invested not to have a way to keep these running.

I am still trying to find the best way to get my Lionel 6-11155 (2-10-10-2) running with all the original features. I even asked Lionel if I could get the parts from the new release engine without any feedback from them.

@DaveGG posted:

I agree.  I too, am looking at this differently.  I have way too much invested not to have a way to keep these running.

I am still trying to find the best way to get my Lionel 6-11155 (2-10-10-2) running with all the original features. I even asked Lionel if I could get the parts from the new release engine without any feedback from them.

The part for the current release are still available, but it'll be a big job to totally retrofit it with the new electronics, not to mention somewhat expensive.  That's how Bruk builds his Legacy upgrades.

@Chuck Sartor posted:

I wish Lionel would 'man up' and let us know via this forum what happened to the electronic parts. Did they sell to a third party and will be on the market again, or were they thrown away. ( I find it hard to believe they would just throw them in a dumpster, like throwing money away.)

I have a repair that needs a specific DCDS-J board - no way to fix currently since they became OBSOLETE in Lionel's words.

A universal better reliable regulator would be welcomed, until then we just have to wire it up as mentioned above.

Jim

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

Well, you do have to wire the smoke heater to pins 5-6 of the R2LC, that output is no in the picture or your description.  Also, note that the 5W resistor has to be "cracked" to expose the internal wirewound resistor, you won't fit that big square block into the smoke unit.

This is the exact resistor I "crack" for 20 ohm smoke resistors: Yageo SQP500JB-20R, and if you want 27 ohm smoke resistors, use this one: Yageo SQP500JB-27R

I just put them diagonally in the vise and squeeze enough to crack the ceramic, it drops away and you have your smoke resistor.  At the rate I go through them, it saves quite a bit of money.

Haha, I have used your recommended resistor cracking method at least a dozen times with great results. Just have to clean up the ceramic bits before the wifey finds them...

I will look and see what it will take to wire pins 5 and 6 on R2LC to the heater. Out of question why wouldn't I wire pins 1 & 2 to the smoke heater per the 691-PCB1-10D motherboard link you sent?

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

You and me both Chuck!  What a bummer they chose to simply orphan tens of thousands of locomotives at the stroke of a pen!  You know if the parts ever do surface that they'll cost lots more than they did previously!

The cynic in me still wonders if that was a move to force people to buy new stuff and they really did just dump them!

Not even being cynical you have to believe that is the sales model. I am sure someone realized how much they were losing when people could easily revive old locos with OEM parts at a fraction of the cost of new. TMCC stuff could go on forever with Lionel's continued support and that isn't adding to their bottom line. Planned obsolescence was bound to catch up with the toy train industry at some point.

@Doug Kinsman posted:

I will look and see what it will take to wire pins 5 and 6 on R2LC to the heater. Out of question why wouldn't I wire pins 1 & 2 to the smoke heater per the 691-PCB1-10D motherboard link you sent?

You would use the motherboard connections, I was just pointing out where they end up on the R2LC.  I always like to check and make sure that my connections to the smoke unit actually get to the right place on the R2LC.  Sometimes there is a mistake in documentation.

@Doug Kinsman posted:

Not even being cynical you have to believe that is the sales model. I am sure someone realized how much they were losing when people could easily revive old locos with OEM parts at a fraction of the cost of new.

I think they simply don't want the hassel of stocking parts and filling orders anymore.

Imo, this all started with the annual " half off parts sale" the last several years. Parts availability had a limited supply from the get go. There's no need to discount and let it go, unless you want it gone to begin with.

The only person that cared about parts and repair no longer works for Lionel. In the meantime. He has helped reorganize the parts dept of the competition.

@DaveGG posted:

I am still trying to find the best way to get my Lionel 6-11155 (2-10-10-2) running with all the original features. I even asked Lionel if I could get the parts from the new release engine without any feedback from them.

Boy, that's a shame.

@RickO posted:

I think they simply don't want the hassel of stocking parts and filling orders anymore.

If that were true, all the mechanical parts that remained would have disappeared as well.  However, it was only the key electronic parts that vanished.  Sorry, but I'm not buying it was the hassle of stocking parts, the number of parts that were removed were a small fraction of the parts stocked!

Well, that's a good point John.

It just seems that whatever parts aren't already gone are gradually disappearing from the website anyway.

Maybe it's just how horrible the website is makes me think all of the parts are gone😆

Well, it's even worse than I thought because when I got home today and fired it up the smoke worked. So, instead of something broken that I can fix, it's probably a loose wire somewhere that will never be found. Also, the magnet on the flywheel decided to fall off (had this happen on a Challenger of similar vintage) and make it run like crap. Luckily I took notice before the magnet was destroyed and gave it some CA love. Thanks for everyone's help, just need to troubleshoot and fix as things come up, nature of the beast.

Still might be a AC reg issue as these fail in strange ways (work and then don't work).

@DaveGG posted:

Still might be a AC reg issue as these fail in strange ways (work and then don't work).

I don’t even blink anymore, some of us just bypass that worthless reg straight out the gate …..isolate a 20-22 resistor, run it right back to the radio board, don’t even look at the regulator, ….leave it sit there thinking what a wonderful job it’s doing!,……NOT ……😉

@harmonyards posted:

I don’t even blink anymore, some of us just bypass that worthless reg straight out the gate …..isolate a 20-22 resistor, run it right back to the radio board, don’t even look at the regulator, ….leave it sit there thinking what a wonderful job it’s doing!,……NOT ……😉

LOL.  I have some spares, but now question if I will ever install rather than do as you suggest.

@DaveGG posted:

LOL.  I have some spares, but now question if I will ever install rather than do as you suggest.

That system has been quirky from the word go, …….I’ve got 3 Mohawks with that system, all 3 got bypassed due to stupid behavior problems…..

Pat

Yep, now that you can't even buy the regulators, bypassing them is the answer.  Sadly, for early Legacy, bypassing them isn't an option as there is no convenient smoke output from the Legacy R4LC!

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

Yep, now that you can't even buy the regulators, bypassing them is the answer.  Sadly, for early Legacy, bypassing them isn't an option as there is no convenient smoke output from the Legacy R4LC!

John,

Do you have an example of what engines those may be?  Approximate year they were made?

Dave, Legacy from 2006 to at least early 2010 were modular boards, so any of those that have a bad smoke regulator no longer will have command controlled smoke.

Thanks!

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

Dave, Legacy from 2006 to at least early 2010 were modular boards, so any of those that have a bad smoke regulator no longer will have command controlled smoke.

Yep, I’d drink to that!….it’s a trip around your butt and back again if you want to fix the early legacy with failed smoke…..

Pat

@RickO posted:

I thought the "rumor" was.

There was going to be some type of a formal announcement of/by the new parts vendor?

It really makes one start to rethink ones pre-orders.

Who's to say they won't dump the parts for locos delivered next week in 8 or 10 years?

Someone should have kept an eye on that dumpster behind the Concord headquarters.

Rick I don't think we'll ever hear anything from Lionel or any new parts vendor.

Seems to me they just want to sell trains not parts. I'd almost bet they throwed all those parts away.

I was just reading through this older post and have to say it is painful to see this.

Look at all the younger people that have inherited their grandparents trains and can't keep them running as intended. Trains should be like coo coo clocks and last for generations if you care for them properly. It sure is a shame to see this happen with no after market options to get parts.

Luckily for me all my locomotives are PS3 MTH or Lionel legacy and lionchief plus or plus 2.0. Of course I guess the same will happen with those at some point in time. I guess that's to be expected with anything with electronics.

Brad