I am helping a local flyer get into glow and ended up with two of his airplanes and the engine from a third to go over!
1: 90-size Corsair. OS FS120. From what I can see there is nothing wrong with this engine that would prevent it from running except that it's missing the woodruff key that locks the drive washer to the crankshaft. She ain't gonna run too well if the crank can spin inside the prop! I might also fiddle with the pneumatic Robarts but in all likelihood itt'l get electrics put in it for reliability's sake.
2: Hobbico TwinStar. I'd been eyeing this one myself for a while as parts for the one I already have, but when homey said he wanted to get into glow and wanted a cheap, but good, plane I pointed him in this direction. Basically a brother to theone I have, came from the same estate lot. Two Evo 36's on it. Was able to get them to run and they run okay. Ripped babby's first training pegs out of the mixture needles; starboard engine came good port engine still has transition issues. I might just say 'yo let's just throw bearings at one of these two spare 25FX's I have, swap those onto the twinstar, and forget about the Evo 36s' since I know the 25FXs run properly and my own TwinStar flies mint on the same engine setup. Other than that, all it needs is a bit of hangar rash repair, a thorough dusting, a modern receiver(He flies Spektrum) and a LiFE battery. Not bad for $150. And potentially a YS that he didn't pay for in the first place....more on that in a bit.
3: He got a free glow Edge 540...with a YS FZ63S on the nose. I know, right? He's a 3D guy too he will have a blast with that ship. Thing is, this YS is VERY unhappy. It rotated when he got it but not through a complete revolution so I offered to take it home with me and work on it. Valves stuck fully down, piston was hitting them. Unstuck valves...oh boy. Springs are shot. Intake spring weak but still closes the valve well, exhaust spring so badly sunk that I can use the damned engine as a duck call. Oh joy. Bottom end and rotating assembly is free of corrosion so I cleaned up the valvetrain parts, unstuck everything. It SORT OF built compression, enough that I was confident it would run, so I made sure the diaphragm and regulator weren't gummed up, reset the HSN, mounted it up.
It does run, but it runs like total -beep-. VERY VERY VERY hard to start, leaks like a sieve, transition is terrible. But it did start, it idled fine, and when it finally did come up to full power it had a LOT of power to give. It's a saveable engine. Already ordered 30 bucks of parts for it; would like to re-ring it while I'm in there but those are out of stock so here's hoping the ring is good.
NGL I kinda want to keep this thing. It would be an excellent engine for my Long EZ due to the fuel pump, the supercharging, and the 4-cycle fuel economy. I could probably fly for half an hour of hard aerobatics with the huge tank in that model AND I would never have to worry about fuel draw due to the lengthy fuel lines and tank placement in that model.
Maybe I can work something out where I take the YS as payment for the 25FX's maybe? And perhaps toss him the 46AX on the Long-EZ as well? Hmm. Will have to chat him up about that I think. He doesn't really have any skin in the game on it so I don't think itt'l be too hard to convince him to part company with it.
Not bad at all. Never heard anything bad about those engines. Respectable performance and reliability. The real tell will be in the case; pop the backplate and have a whiff or two in there. If it has been run at all you'll smell castor down there. Or at least, you won't smell assembly lube.
1: 90-size Corsair. OS FS120. From what I can see there is nothing wrong with this engine that would prevent it from running except that it's missing the woodruff key that locks the drive washer to the crankshaft. She ain't gonna run too well if the crank can spin inside the prop! I might also fiddle with the pneumatic Robarts but in all likelihood itt'l get electrics put in it for reliability's sake.
2: Hobbico TwinStar. I'd been eyeing this one myself for a while as parts for the one I already have, but when homey said he wanted to get into glow and wanted a cheap, but good, plane I pointed him in this direction. Basically a brother to theone I have, came from the same estate lot. Two Evo 36's on it. Was able to get them to run and they run okay. Ripped babby's first training pegs out of the mixture needles; starboard engine came good port engine still has transition issues. I might just say 'yo let's just throw bearings at one of these two spare 25FX's I have, swap those onto the twinstar, and forget about the Evo 36s' since I know the 25FXs run properly and my own TwinStar flies mint on the same engine setup. Other than that, all it needs is a bit of hangar rash repair, a thorough dusting, a modern receiver(He flies Spektrum) and a LiFE battery. Not bad for $150. And potentially a YS that he didn't pay for in the first place....more on that in a bit.
3: He got a free glow Edge 540...with a YS FZ63S on the nose. I know, right? He's a 3D guy too he will have a blast with that ship. Thing is, this YS is VERY unhappy. It rotated when he got it but not through a complete revolution so I offered to take it home with me and work on it. Valves stuck fully down, piston was hitting them. Unstuck valves...oh boy. Springs are shot. Intake spring weak but still closes the valve well, exhaust spring so badly sunk that I can use the damned engine as a duck call. Oh joy. Bottom end and rotating assembly is free of corrosion so I cleaned up the valvetrain parts, unstuck everything. It SORT OF built compression, enough that I was confident it would run, so I made sure the diaphragm and regulator weren't gummed up, reset the HSN, mounted it up.
It does run, but it runs like total -beep-. VERY VERY VERY hard to start, leaks like a sieve, transition is terrible. But it did start, it idled fine, and when it finally did come up to full power it had a LOT of power to give. It's a saveable engine. Already ordered 30 bucks of parts for it; would like to re-ring it while I'm in there but those are out of stock so here's hoping the ring is good.
NGL I kinda want to keep this thing. It would be an excellent engine for my Long EZ due to the fuel pump, the supercharging, and the 4-cycle fuel economy. I could probably fly for half an hour of hard aerobatics with the huge tank in that model AND I would never have to worry about fuel draw due to the lengthy fuel lines and tank placement in that model.
Maybe I can work something out where I take the YS as payment for the 25FX's maybe? And perhaps toss him the 46AX on the Long-EZ as well? Hmm. Will have to chat him up about that I think. He doesn't really have any skin in the game on it so I don't think itt'l be too hard to convince him to part company with it.
I spent most of today fooling around with the various things I got at the tri-county swap meet the other day. Among these things were a healthy amount of engines!
The real jewel was this pretty much NIB Tower 46. It's got a bit of oil residue on it here and there, but I think this is oil that was applied for long-term storage; I took a big whiff of the exhaust port and smelled nothing. I'm pretty sure it's never been run, and I'm not going to bother running it until I have it installed in something. I paid $60 for it along with a big box of propellers. I'd consider that a pretty good deal.
View attachment 199939
Not bad at all. Never heard anything bad about those engines. Respectable performance and reliability. The real tell will be in the case; pop the backplate and have a whiff or two in there. If it has been run at all you'll smell castor down there. Or at least, you won't smell assembly lube.
Typical OS. I'd almost bet money it'd work fine with that 25 on a twin, though. I know the power difference between the 40 and 46 LA is basically negligble and they're just slightly modern versions of the FP series. Tach both engines on the same prop and see; if the RPM difference is <250 you won't notice a thing in flight.Also got a pretty thoroughly gummed and siezed OS 20FP for 20 bucks. Until I got it home I thought it was a 25FP so I could use it on a twin with the other 25FP I've already got, but I guess that's not the case Either way a bit of heat and Marvel mystery oil was all it took to get it going again. It's a bit overpropped on a 9x6 MAS but it was the best thing I had that didn't involve chopping up a prop. I think it'll be much happier with a 9x4, and it would love that on a slower airplane. Other than that it ran perfectly. Not like that's any real surprise, just OS being OS.
No application lined up for it at the moment, so it goes in the unemployed engine bin. It'd be happy on an old-timer, and that's what I think I'll do with it.
1/2a Kaos's do exist. I have one. Partially built. Very rare kit though I just stumbled across it on eBay. Mine is gonna get my RC-modified Fox 049 FAI.I also got a Norvel 049! It was on an old beat up glider that nobody seemed to want. When the meet was almost over and people started packing up, I offered to get it out of his sight for him for $10 and it came home with me. I'm slightly bummed that this isn't the version with the RC carb, but that's no big deal because swapping it out for the Cox RC carb that EX makes shouldn't be too hard. I would use the Norvel carburetor, but they're difficult to find not already attached to an engine.
Originally I wanted to put this on an S-tee but I think it might have a little too much power for one. It was designed to fly on Cox reedies after all. I didn't even get it fully peaked out in this video as it started trying to escape its mount and was duly shut off. Also whoever designed the muffler on this shouldn't be designing parts for engines. I tried pointing it in a direction to get the least oil everywhere but it decided to start spinning around like a drunken ballerina instead. I think if I mount this on anything I'll use threadlock or something to hold the back part of the muffler from spinning around. Speaking of that I wonder if anyone has drawn up a 1/2A sized Kaos? This would be perfect for it.
Last edited: