romiller49 posted:There has got to be a reason for Lionel wick premature burning other than not enough fluid. Looking at the pictures posted I think we can see the reason. Looking at the smoke unit housing the cut out for air flow would make me think that the impeller needs to spin CCW to allow more air passing through the cutout over the resistor. Too me, looking at the impeller the way it’s mounted, it would need CW rotation for air to be pushed away from the impeller allowing maximum air flow. If I’m correct on the CW rotation the air would hit the casting in the opposite direction needed and not allowing the air to fully excape in to the resistor area causing overheating.
I see the point you are making and I noticed the same thing in another VL engine, the Baldwin Centipede, which has four single smoke units. In those units, however, the fan motor was wired so that the impeller would spin CCW so as to propel air directly into the cut out leading to the resistor.
However, I'm not sure that this would account for the sort of heat damage caused here, which is not minor. Also it would be a design defect, meaning that it would have appeared in other VLBBs and (a) I have not seen any reports of that and (b) it has not happened in mine. Going back to the OP's original post, everything (fan, heater) failed, which might indicate a main board failure.
As this engine was serviced by Mike R. I'd email him to ask what he thinks. I would not discount lack of smoke fluid as a cause of overheating as in my experience these units use up fluid very quickly. Mike R. also referred to this in the instruction video made in connection with the issue of engine, which I took as a kind of warning to keep them topped up.
