Hello all. This morning my Lionel Lionchief Mikado smoke quit again. I got this engine in 2013. I've got allot of run time on it. I like it because you can run it slow and it's a super good puller. Anyway I had put 12 drops of Lionel smoke fluid in before I powered it on. Then started running it slow and again it was smoking like a WWII destroyer. It was running for a two or three minutes. I was running two separate mainline trains. I then notices that the Mikado just had a wisp of smoke. I stopped it right away and added some more fluid. I heard cracking. So I assumed it was hot in the smoke unit. When I started running it again I had nothing.
Can you buy a smoke unit with the fan any where. Does anyone know where these units can be bought. I'm going to try calling Lionel service but I'll bet they want you to send them the engine and let them do the work. I'd rather do it myself. Been fixing Lionel trains sense the 1960's.
I also have MTH engines. I guess the train gods are against me this month. A week ago I was running my Pennsylvania railking F3's that have a smoke unit. The smoke unit was not working so I opened the power unit up and saw I had over filled the smoke unit. I cleaned it up. tested the power unit without the shell on it. She was running and smoking great. I put the shell on and hooked everything up and poof. I lost the control board. I pinched the wire between the battery and control board to the frame. So now I need a new proto2 control board. MTH does not sell them to john Q citizen. You must send the unit to them and they do the work. And you get a proto3 board. Plus you send at least $ 200.00 bucks to them.
So if anyone knows where I can get a smoke unit for a 3158 Mikado please let me know. I use to get parts from a guy named Harrison? But I've lost his number. I think he is in New York state but not sure?
Thanks Larry. I had a friend in Louisiana named Bill Harrison. He was a good parts supplier. I just sent him an email asking if he had that part number.
I looked the unit over and it's smoking fine. But the fan motor has stopped. I did get it working again for maybe 25 seconds but it failed again. So we will see what happens? I sure loved this little Mikado. It's a super puller and didn't cost much. Perfect to run with post war Lionel stuff.
I ordered a Mikado smoke unit from by friend in New York that is a Lionel parts supplier. He said a 3 week wait. After a couple days I called Lionel support and got the parts folks. Ordered the 6801295200 as shown on the parts diagram for the Lionchief Mikado 3158. Got in a week (yesterday). Didn't get a chance to install the unit until this morning. The little screws are a real problem getting them out and back in. Cause I had to use a super little screw driver to fit then my old fingers didn't have the power to back the screws out? So I did a pair of pliers holding the screw driver handle and finally got them lose. After removing the old unit and installing the new unit. Using the pliers and super small screwdriver I managed to get the job done.
I was not really comfortable the unit was the real problem and if this new unit didn't work I was going to buy another Mikado and call Lionel to fix 3158. I've seen allot of posts on the net with smoke unit failures and a new unit not fixing the problem. Seems like the board that controls when the fan motor should run was the problem. I even called Lionel to see if that board was available. I took the Mikado to the layout with out the casting on the frame so I could watch the fan. Low and behold the smoke unit worked great. So the fan motor was the problem in my case.
Big thanks to trainlarry for the information and link to the Mikado diagram. Id like to add that after the postman left the smoke unit in the mailbox the Fedx man shows up with my smoking MTH Pennsy F-3's.