smoke unit?

First I'd make certain the smoke unit piston is moving up and down. sometimes smoke material gets into the cylinder and freezes the piston. Sometimes the engine is accidentally assembled with the piston crank out of place. If it isn't moving freely, remove the piston. Clean both the piston and cylinder. You might want to add a 2026-44 smoke unit spring. It just drops into the cylinder before the piston is installed. (The piston/crank assembly is held in place by the steam chest.

Its possible that there is an excess amount of smoke pellet material in your smoke unit. If so, just running the engine without adding more smoke pellets may resolve the problem.

Another thing to check is the health of the heater.  Sometimes they will get a high resistance connection on one of the connections.  New repro elements are not expensive and may be the answer.

If you want to use smoke liquid in it (which is a good idea, but that's your decision), you don't have to convert anything.  My 2026 and 2037 have their original smoke units, and once I got them properly cleaned of old pellet gunk, they smoked better on Lionel smoke fluid than they ever did.

last night i opened it up and cleaned out everything, the smoke piston works great and moves freely. i cleaned the heating element. it had been suggested to me to replace that pink material in there with some insulation and make sure its up against the heating element. i've tried a few drops of liquid in there, and at the time i got better results with pellets, **** i dont know. i may ride this out for a bit, and when im lower on pellets than i am do a conversion

Make certain that the material in the smoke unit is used up before adding another pellet. The pellets solidify between operating sessions and are still in there. As I mentioned above, too much smoke material will reduce the smoke output by preventing the element from getting hot enough.

yeah the guy at my train store told me that also, besides i cleaned the element last night

Don't forget to clean out the air hole in the smoke unit so the piston can pump air into the heating chamber

guess who go tthe smoke unit pumpin!

Nice! What was the overall issue with it?

I don't think a conversion is really necessary for fluid, my 2037 has had liquid and pellets used periodically since the 60s depending on what was found first. When the element wire was broken by a clumsy attempt at cleaning the stack, I disassembled and replaced the element with a NOS element Gramps included when new (I still have two left). While open, I didn't find the "clogging" sludge Ive read about. The felt "wicking" was re-used, and the cap went on fine. Ill change the gasket next time. My air hole leads into a cast tube sitting high enough to be above the liquid so it doesn't weep. Since she was apart I also added diodes to the motor to further increase the smoke output. She's my first, my favorite, creeps well for a post war loco, and takes fast bends better than any other loco I own, including other magnetraction units.

She's My Cannonball .         

diodes? what type and where? why?

I used the Radio shack diodes (6 or 8a?) to reduce the voltage at the motor, leaves more at the smoke unit. Bridge rectifiers can also be used as they are just a "ring of diodes". You could also unwrap and remove a wrap or two of the element wire too, or even shunt to just bypass the number of wires you choose. An on/off, and/or hi/low switch? There are lots of posts on the do's and dont's of upgrading smoke units, most in the electrical forum, here's one to get you started  https://ogrforum.ogaugerr.com/t...and-voltage-on-track

 you could use the search at the page top(blue) to find more too.