Lionel Smoke Units - Help

Thanks Jim, I watched ir a long time ago, but I will review it tonight.

My experience tells me that 10 drops then adding 3 means your smoke units are nearly dry. That is not very much fluid.  It may be that you have been running your smoke units nearly dry and now the wadding is burned....

My 2 cents, in addition to all the above, is that I know you run Lionel engines from fairly widely spaced production dates  - TMCC Warbonnets from several years back and some more recent models - and they have different performance issues. Those with TMCC that had a 28 Ohm resistor and a fiber sleeve on it as mentioned above by JDaddy never produced copious smoke until having the Mike R. mods done to them.

But even later models with Legacy were, with a few exceptions, not great smokers compared with MTH. Overall it does sound to me that you are not using enough smoke fluid and which fluid you use makes a difference. JT Megasteam generally produces nice output.

On the other hand, with many Legacy units it’s a case of fine tuning settings like EFX if you are using command control. (Off the top of my head I can’t recall if you do but running purely conventional probably ups the importance of the last factor I’ll mention.) If you put in too much fluid, generally all Lionel units need some running time to burn it off and get back to what is effectively a sweet spot of voltage to the unit, a correct amount of fluid and settings. You can only establish this by trial and error. I have found the Lionel dual stack and whistle smoke units to be the most finicky in this regard. They also have mainly plastic components and I have found some with the fan motor wiring reversed at the factory so that they don’t run the impeller clockwise as they are all designed to do.

What I have noticed is that the consistency of the voltage to the track along the whole circuit makes a lot of difference to smoke output in more recent Lionel engines. I have some that only smoke as I hoped they would on either side of the nearest terminal connection to the transformer, in my case a ZW-L. Since I am always using temporary track arrangements, poor connections between track sections probably accounts for that but it can happen on any layout, including if the track has residue built up on it that inhibits conductivity.

A while back there was a slight brand war as Lionel pushed its Premium smoke fluid (now in various scents) at the expense of Megasteam, which it was claimed left a residue on the wicking. I didn’t buy that pitch but still use only Lionel Premium in my two VL steamers, mainly because I can’t contemplate opening them up for service.

But reverting to Wood’s original question, yes - 10 + 3 drops is far too little for most Lionel SMUs, especially when filling them for the first time. When I replace the wicking in any of mine, I saturate it with probably 30 drops or more depending on the size of the smoke chamber. 

Some while back, a very informed poster “LaidOffSick” a.k.a. Doug put together a series of videos on servicing Lionel Legacy smoke units in which he challenged Lionel’s advice about only 20 drops at a time. This is one of them but he was doing what I have had to, which is open up the engine to replace/repack wicking, which takes some maintenance experience:

Walter, in my experience it depends on which engine and which of the (innumerable) Lionel smoke units it has. For about the last 8 years, Lionel has equipped its Legacy engines with all plastic (apart from the fan motor and electronic components) smoke units, which are considerably smaller than the old mainly metal ones. I agree that these have more limited capacity than earlier SMUs or MTH ones. 

There are other factors with these that might relate to Wood's original question. There's a lightly, on OGR, documented issue about the whistle smoke impellers on these melting and therefore failing to work properly because they don't spin unless the whistle feature is activated and so may have a constant heat source on one side for long periods of time. Smoke fluid can also foul the fan motors and cause them to stick or whine - which is usually reflected in the dreaded Legacy cab blinks. I have had this more than once - but that may reflect my making sure that the wicking is saturated.

It was not until relatively recently (issue of the SP AC-9s) that Lionel upped the smoke production on Legacy SMUs by changing the code in some way they have never fully explained (although Dave O. has acknowledged they did so). SMUs are not rocket science but without manufacturer explanation they are a mystery to most of us.

I think he’s still running his O scale engine transporter (special boxes) business, and posts on Instagram every so often, but has probably moved on in terms of forums and YouTube videos. So have others I have followed in the past but they contributed to the knowledge base, which is the important thing.