Spreewald 21741 Melting Smoke Stack.

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Gorsebank

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Having run my trusty Spreewald 21741 loco today i noticed that the smoke stack was at a strange angle. On further investigation the base of the chimney showed signs of melting which had deformed it both in a forward and sideways direction.
I have now rectified the problem by protecting everything but the chimney and gently heating with a hot air gun until i was able to get it back in the correct position and with some careful cleaning up it looks almost as good as new.
Has anyone else had this problem. The smoke generator in the chimney is still working after the fix and i cannot detect any excessive heat around the chimney base after a couple of hours of running ?
 
I have come across 'deformed' chimneys, and to a lesser extent, the collar on the loco they fit into..
I am not sure if some were moulded from a different plastics during one iteration of ownership of the LGB brand?

I have found the 'LGB original' smoke generators to be quite robust when fed with the wrong voltage.. 19V generators, fed with 22/24V outputs from decoders, smoke very well and seem to survive the abuse.
Not necessarily so the locomotive.
 
I think you may find that a lot of LGB Spreewalds had chimneys that leaned a few degrees off line, something to do with an error in the moulding process..... I had one a while back (since moved on to a new home) where the stack wasn't straight - but I only first noticed it months after buying the loco - but of course, once seen, such things cannot be "unseen" and tend to bug you each time you look at it.

I certainly remember reading somewhere about the first batch of LGB 0-6-0 - 0-6-0 German Mallets having a mould fault that resulted in a slightly canted stack, and a large number were made and sold before the problem was noticed at the factory. I think the same sort of thing may have happened with the Spreewald, hopefully the newer versions have the problem fixed?

Anybody on here that has a Spreewald of any vintage - just have a careful look at it from dead on front view - is the stack exactly vertical? It would be very interesting to try to identify if this is a real problem, and if so, which years/batches it affects....

Jon.
 
This one is from the 3 pin gearbox model process of being converted to DCC, on board PCB dated 1980, other than that have no other information or date of origin.
 

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Can't really tell from the photo, Arthur - is that one straight, or not? Looks to me like it might be leaning VERY slightly to the left (of the pic, ie: to the loco's right), but it may be that the front lamp isn't quite on straight, or it might just be the angle of the pic....

Jon.
 
Looking as you suggest, front view, the stack appears upright, front lamp bit wonky, and dodgy picture taker!
 
Thank you for your suggestions, the problem is definitely to do with the smoke generator producing to much heat. The loco is fitted with a Massoth XL decoder and although I have changed the value of CV51 down to 1 which mean 3% of the supply voltage ie only 0.72 volts should be available from the Function 1 terminals, the smoke unit is still hot and producing plenty of smoke.

The decoder was already fitted when I purchased the loco and I will now have a look inside and see how it has been wired.
 
If you have reduced CV 53 and it still smokes.. Read back CV 54. - This will show which button controls the A1 output.
It might be easier to go through the CV values to fin which output is bein used.
 
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