RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

I bought a new Tarr Smoker to use with my ElMod and I’ve managed to already burn my initial wick and promptly burned my new replacement wick within a few minutes! I had the wick and the cotton ball loaded with about 25 drops or so of Megasteam and started up the ol’ Tiger. The fan started whirring and off I went. Quickly I smelled burned wick and shut everything down. I immediately disassembled the Tarrr smoker (which was hotter than hell on Sunday) and the wick was already blackened around the new resistor and smelled like a chemical fire. Big stink! The Mega Steam oil is unscented by the way. WTF? The package of replacement wick/resistors had 7.2 written on them. Do I need a particular Tarr unit to work with my board? Honestly I’m not a big fan of smokers but I thought I would give it a try and it pisses me off that I can’t get this set up to function properly.
Any ideas?

Check the Elmod App and reduce the maximum smoke voltage to 7,2 v.

Common issue with the tarr. Like rad said you need to lower the voltage on the elmod setting.

IBU is the same I have to run min at 50% otherwise I burn through a wick evertime I start a tank up

Is this what you mean? It’s the only voltage parameter I can see on the smoker page and it’s range is 6-12. I have it on 7. Is there another parameter adjustment somewhere else that I’m overlooking maybe?




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hi Jimster, yes, that is the parameter I had in mind. Lower it to 6v and lets see what happens.

But yes, I have read unlimited mixed-to bad reports about the Tarr units that vary from "Almost no smoke" to "I've burnt my tank and almost my home" I don't have any Tarr smoker, and probably a lot of the faulty units are due to some user's fault but people reporting problems are there...

Anyway, in my experience, nothing matched modifiying the heng long units as I did here years ago: https://radindustries.wordpress.com/201 ... enerators/

The setting that you can change there is the fan voltage. I understand the wick gets the maximum that the battery has. If it’s 2s then over 8v is what it gets. The fan voltage matters because with the wrong setting it will not work at all. When they say the smoker is 12v or 7v they mean the fan voltage. The rest is the same. Well at least in my understanding.
Also the wick can get burnt. It’s not unusual.
Also you wrote about drops of mega steam. Tarr smokers need more than HL. Don’t be mean with oil. Fill it up generously.


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Hello, Just fitted a tarr smoker on my elmod , I think you have changed the red and black wire of the smoker around as the instructions tell you to do with the taigen smoker. but if you do this with the tarr smoker it make the fan go the wrong way and its not cooling the smoker enough. done it myself but noticed the direction of the fan and changed it back. works fine, hope this helps.

I’m so glad you mentioned that! I happen to have one more spare wick so I will pay more attention to how I solder the wires back up. I was really hoping to get it to work. I have Mega Steam so it ought to do great. Should it be filled with enough to have some oil pooled in the bottom or just enough to soak that cotton ball?

I normally put 2 full filler tubes in. It smokes but not mega.

I just ordered a GI Smoker, the Baroness 2. It should arrive this Friday.