shorling posted:If fluid is used in a pellet unit, why doesn't the fluid spill out of the unit to the engine interior when the engine is tipped on its side or inverted ?
It will if there is too much in the reservoir for the fiberglass wick to absorb. Hence the warning of only adding a few drops at a time. But all it will do is make a mess, rather than jam up the works.
The advantage of fluid over pellets is that the pellets will also run out of the reservoir if the loco is tipped when they are liquefied. Once they harden, they are no longer near the heat source and will no longer re-liquefy when the loco is running. That means you will have to disassemble the loco and clean up the hardened pellet residue, especially if it gets into someplace where it jams the piston or plugs the air hole.
I once cleaned the equivalent of at least thirteen pellets worth of hardened residue from the mechanism. The loco had stopped smoking, because of hardened pellet residue where it was not supposed to be, so the operators kept putting more pellets in it.
