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I am not sure of the reason that you desire to silence the chuff on the locomotive but it is yours to do with as you wish. You might try enlarging the hole in the smoke unit. Remove the boiler/cab casting, disconnect the piston rod from the gear. At this point remove the smoke unit from the chassis and carefully open the hole at the top of the cylinder to maybe 3/16 inch. That should silence the chuff, but also allow it to puff the smoke.

Raymond

the chuff is caused primarely by a spring steel plate with a punched hole in it that is just in front of the smoke chamber. To remove it, take the top off the smoke unit (to do this properly, unsolder the wires and unwind the heating element wire that is wrapped around each soldering tab so the heating element can stay inside the smoke unit untouched) now you can pry the black plate straight up. Reassemble the top, you should now have a non-choo-choo smoke unit that still puffs the smoke out of the stack.

I have used just about every smoke fluid around even original Flyer fluid in the little red ampules. Nothing today smells exactly like the original so use what ever you like. However when it comes to smoke production," A Normal"  smoke fluid for me produces the best smoke. I use original Gilbert transformers. The reason I mention transformers is that they are not all the same when it comes to smoke production. MTH Z1000 uses a chopped sine wave and any locomotive that has a smoke unit will produce more smoke when using that particular transformer. The draw back is that chopped sine waves also produce a hum in whistle equipped locomotives.  Lionel transformers produce a slightly higher voltage than Gilbert's and therefore will produce slightly more smoke but only when running the loco really fast.

 

 

 

Major posted:

I have used just about every smoke fluid around even original Flyer fluid in the little red ampules. Nothing today smells exactly like the original so use what ever you like. However when it comes to smoke production," A Normal"  smoke fluid for me produces the best smoke. I use original Gilbert transformers. The reason I mention transformers is that they are not all the same when it comes to smoke production. MTH Z1000 uses a chopped sine wave and any locomotive that has a smoke unit will produce more smoke when using that particular transformer. The draw back is that chopped sine waves also produce a hum in whistle equipped locomotives.  Lionel transformers produce a slightly higher voltage than Gilbert's and therefore will produce slightly more smoke but only when running the loco really fast.

 

 

 

Thank you, Major, your reply is very helpful. Arnold

One other thing that can improve smoke production. Early Flyer locos were wired with the smoke unit in series with the motor. These are locomotives with the four wire connectors. Later Flyer production added a fifth wire so that the smoke unit got full track voltage. You can also add this fifth wire to earlier locos so that their smoke unit gets full track power. Just some ideas for thought.

Rayin"S" posted:

One more option for increasing smoke output without having to run at high speed is to install a smoke unit resistor as used in Marx steamers. These are about 27 ohms and produce good smoke at normal running speeds.

Ray

That idea is interesting! I have not heard of it previously. How is it done?

While this page below is about a Lionel fan driven smoke unit the element design can be adapted to Gilbert type smoke units. Realize there are several different designs of the Gilbert smoke units.  Some used a resistor and some used a nichrome wire wrapped wick.  My design combines the two so the resistor body supports the element winding and can be used in all Gilbert smoke units.
Link to Web page:
http://www.tuveson.com/hybrid-...id_smoke_element.htm

 

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