I have an unique smoke unit off a 336 steam engine.
It doesn’t have a wick only a heating element. The bottom doesn’t have a screwed in plate it just plain metal, so I can’t put a wick in it.
If you are familiar with this type, let me know and let me know how I can get it to smoke.
The 336 normally has the same unit as all AF’s. Can you post a picture please?
Jim
I have the pics. If you can give me some pointers on how to post them I would appreciate it.
Thanks.
Here are some pics . . .
If someone can give me some more information, I would appreciate it.
Nice pictures. What you have is just the housing and the upper and lower plates for the housing with what remained of the heating element.
Do you have the screws to hold the top and bottom to the housing? Do you have the connecting rod and piston? If do have all the parts this can be rebuilt. Order a smoke wick from Portlines or similar parts dealer and replace per the instructions. It is easy to do. A few tips they don’t tell you in the instructions. SLIGHTLY enlarge the holes where the wick passes through the housing, this allows for more fluid to flow to the heating element. Wet the ends of the wick with smoke fluid to facilitate pushing the wick through the holes in the housing. Makes sure the windings on the heating element are spaced and not overlapping. Tighten the screws that hold the upper and lower plate to the housing evenly to prevent leaks.
If you are missing parts, go on ebay or another source of AF trains and buy a cheap loco that has a working smoke unit, buy it remove the working smoke unit and put that unit in your 336. The loco smoke units are all the same.
Here is a source for AF repair parts. They also have an exploded diagram of the of the smoke unit on their steam parts sheet.
Thanks! I have narrowed it down to a single chamber unit. I notice that this is usually in a 5 digit engine. But what I cannot figure out is where do I put the wick, especially when there is only just the heating element as in one of the pics above. When I opened it up, there was no wick. Any further help is much appreciated.
I have never taken mine apart, but I beleive the wick is just packed loosely around the heating element inside the chamber. The question you need to resolve before putting this whole thing back together is whether the element still heats. If so, you just need a rewicking kit. If not, you will have to replace the whole unit.
The heating element does work but doesn’t produce much smoke when I have put smoke oil on it. Right now, I’m leaning towards taking out the element and putting a standard smoke wick in it.
I’ve not seen that type of heating element before but I know the other type does work. I’d just replace the old with and new wick and element.
Jim
You have the final production version of the smoke unit chamber. they usually show up in transition units and 5-digit units. The smoke element resistor is /was made for the Franklin,Casey Jones and Ho smoke units. It looks like there was a shortage and whoever made the unit used what was advailable and forgot the horsehair wick too. you can try wrapping some angel hair around the element as a wick or replace it with a new one. And you can also do what i have done and use the liquid smoke elements from Lionel for a replacement. There are 2 types,the 27 ohm used in the railsound/Odessey units (steady 16 volts or more) or the 20-23 ohm (low volts-8-14v ) 1’s used in the Scout cheapo engines as used in their starter sets for the last 15 years. they look just like yours but a tad longer in body lenths. Try to get the low voltages types, they work the best in Flyer. Hope this helps you.