Need advice please, it has been solved (October 18)

Well, I have to say that I too have had issues with Lionmaster smoke units but nothing that I couldn't fix myself and believe me, I'm no expert, but perseverance pays off.  The two issues I had were with two separate engines but the fix worked equally well for both.  I retained the original Lionel factory smoke unit, however, I removed and repacked the "batting material" and replaced the heating element with new parts purchased directly from the Lionel parts department.  I believe what happens is the batting, as well as the heating element get carbon build-up as a result of not having enough "smoke" fluid or running out of same.  They have a Singed appearance similar to what a wick on a kerosene lantern looks like which will not allow the smoke fluid which is soaked into the batting to efficiently combust (not catch fire but smolder) while in contact with the heating element which has the same Singed condition as the batting.  As far as the MTH Smoke units go, I'm not sure if trying to adapt them to the Lionel engines is worth the trouble because if they are not cared for and operated properly, the result will most probably be similar.  Just my 2 cents.  Hope this helped.  BTW, I love both my Legacy Conrail SD80 MAC and my Legacy Lionmaster Pennsy T1.

 

Chief Bob (Retired)

An MTH smoke unit is not the solution for this situation.  I don't know what is happening to your smoke units, but trying to stuff an MTH smoke unit in there will certainly remove the whistle smoke feature.

 

I have a number of Legacy locomotives with whistle smoke, and I don't see any special issues with the Lionel units.  Truthfully, I've had more issues with the smoke regulators crapping out than the smoke units themselves.

 

Tim is it the fan? Or the smoke unit itself? I can't imagine you burning these things up 1 after another.

The only Lionel smoke units I've seen really "burned up" was when the regulator shorted and dumps around 40 watts into the smoke unit.  For about 15 seconds you have the best smoke you've ever seen, then you have nothing!   I got to see it in person once at our club, it was pretty spectacular.   The locomotive smelled like burnt fiberglass for a long time after that, even after replacing the PCB and smoke regulator.

I will leave the smoke unit advice to the experts here, but I certainly wouldn't let a smoke unit stop me from purchasing another Legacy engine. All the manufacturer's products have a problem from time to time, but they can all be fixed, at least 99% of the time. I think you will be missing out on a LOT of nice products and their features by leaving Legacy engines off your roster.  

I think it is the fan, I posted a thread about it last month, let it sit on the shelf for a month and then the smoke worked most of yesterday.

A pretty easy fix, you can get the newer, and hopefully more reliable, fans from Lionel now.

 

If any of you recall,Seemed like everyone with these first Legacy locos with the steam effect were having these kinds of problems.The thought at the time was maybe Lionel had a batch of bad fan motors.I had the same issues with my 3751 and 3759. I also discovered while replacing the motors that the root cause seemed to be loose plastic flashing bits inside the fan housing that the blade was catching on. I've trimmed off and cleaned out the plastic flash out of the several Legacy smoke units as this is what I suspect caused the motors to seize up and burn out. I bought a dozen extra motors for good measure. I found the same flash issue on my Milwaukee S3 261 and 267 and B&O EM1. I've had no more problems since. The replacement motors are around $4 from Lionel.

The bad motors I had were internal issues with the motors.  I sent a few of them to Jon Z. for Lionel's evaluation some time back.  I didn't have any fan flash that I ever saw, and new motors fixed things.

 

So I have received word from my repair guy and it was 25.00 for a servicing! Smoke unit is suppose to work now, and other issues have been solved hopefully the Smoke Unit won't act up. I follow the appropriate smoke amount preference, I will go half of it so probably 5-12 drops and see what happens. I will get it back into weeks as another club member who lives near the repair guy (Train Shack of Burbank) will save me shipping.

Tim if you only put 5-12 drops in it....you'll burn up the wick after you just had it serviced. Why would you only put in half of the recommended amount?

Thats probably the #1 cause of poor smoke performance. People run their engines with the smoke unit on and no fluid, or not enough fluid. If you don't like a lot of smoke, turn it down to low or medium. Don't run it low on fluid, you will continue to need smoke unit service long before you should.

Just add a zero to that 12, right Doug?

 

Seriously Tim, he's right, if you need smoke fluid, that's too little for a refill.