Marx Smoke Units - longish

[marxalot]

I'm having trouble with an old Marx 1666 unit that is baffling. When I first got the unit it would only barely run. It had been advertised as in good condition , forward reverse, smokes etc. Well I took it down to the bench looked, cleaned, and lubricated. This thing just belched out smoke like crazy during this time and would run fine when upside down. Turn it over and put it on the track and grunt.... It still would barely go forward, a little better in reverse. I notice that in forward there was a nice red glow in the smoke unit. I just kept running the unit (with engine body removed) reverse, stop, forward.. finally there was this little puff of smoke up the stack and away the engine went nicely in forward! That was about a month ago and it has run okay since then. I've put in very little smoke fluid. Today I decided to try more smoke. I added about 6 drops and then started the unit. It ran about two laps and then kept going slower and slower. Okay back to the bench. I tried to get all the liquid smoke out I could and just kept exercizing the thing, forward reverse etc. Eventually I got the thing to run pretty much okay. So a question: it seems that the smoke unit is drawing more power that it should when fluid is added. Is there a way to just disconnect the smoke unit? Or will that cause a problem?