JohnBuckner

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[QUOTE=AllModesR/C;11886070] I took off the back plate and head and soaked it in fuel for a few days and it loosened up. In fact I saw brown goo come out. My question is, is it normal for the engine to make almost like a clicking sound when the piston is at TDC and transitioning for the downward stroke? Otherwise it turns over very smoothly and seems to have great compression![/OUOTE]



Yes this is normal but only on a new engine that has not fully broken in yet in most cases. That is great news for your engine, The cylinder bore of a ABC engine is not a parallel bore but tapered bored at top dead center. This is so the high nitrate aluminum piston running in the chrome or Nichol plated bronze cylinder will be at a perfect fit when heated at running temperature. This mechanical noise at tdc will tend to go away afer a few runs on that engine, This is also how you know its unlikely that airplane was ever actually flown.

This is always the reason you should never dry spin a prop on an engine with your hand or a starter.

John

AllModesR/C

I got the X1 charger and batteries from Tower today and the batteries have the wrong connectors. Any advice?

JohnBuckner

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Hmm yup did I mention that balance cords are a hugh pain in the butt. The two adapters that cover most of the batteries are the TP/FP adapter and the XH adapter. That covers the two balance cords plug designs that the industry has chosen to saddle us with.

John

AllModesR/C

Here are some pics. The black one on the right is the connector on the original batteries and the red one on the left is the new battery.





The new connectors are almost the same size except they have that little wing. Can these connectors be easily swapped out?

JohnBuckner

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OK I thought you meant the balance plugs not the main battery plug, Heck it gets even worse for those there is a multitude of plugs. Those appear to be standard servo plugs but much heavier wires not sure though, check aginst a servo plug. In the case of servo plugs that flange from the Futaba F plug is easily removed with a number eleven blade (hobby knife). I either order batteries with just the Dean,s ultra plug or solder them on myself.


John


Here are a couple of pics I made of the two types balance adapters for the X-4 (on the bottom of the first picture. Those on top are the adapters for those Venom Pro Plus's.

jester_s1

The red plug is a Futaba J plug, and the black one is a JR plug. All you have to do is cut the little tab off the side of the Futaba plug to make it work with JR plug equipment.

JohnBuckner

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Yup J instead of F, always had trouble transposing that letter. Hmm musta have taken to many years getting over the G

joebahl

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I trim them down all the time so all of my older futaba servo plugs will work with my specrtum recievers ,takes a couple minutes and a exacto knife , watch your fingers tho. Where are you at by chicago? i had a student last summer but him and his son are flying fine on their own now. And yes i know what iam doing after 40 years of flying ,instructing and building . My son and a electric scratch build of mine . BTW i have a nice nitro flight box with a electrict fuel pump and a power pannel that i no longer need if your close to me ? I sold off aroung 70 or so of my nitro and gas planes and went all electrict . joe

AllModesR/C

Ok I cut the tabs off the connectors and they fit to my radio. Now i go to charge the batteries on the X1 and it keeps beeping and saying "connection break." These are regular Nicad batteries like my old ones just say Futaba on them. I figure for now I will go the cheap way out until I get better at the hobby then I'll upgrade. I am glad I did this as so far I can't seem to catch a break.:-(

I'm up in the northwest suburbs. I will definitely be interested in the flight box as soon as I get this plane refurbished and air worthy again.

joebahl

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I have a electric starter and glow plug iigniter plus a nice flight box and its yours for free if and when you want to come get it . joe

AllModesR/C

Thanks Joe, you guys really are a great bunch. I wanted to visit the Route 66 museum in Joliet for a while now so maybe when I do I'll swing by for the box. Just wondering why did you go to an all electric fleet? Don't they last only around 5 minutes in the air or have things changed since the 90's?

Anyways here is I get when I try to charge either battery on the X1:



Am I connecting everything correctly? It seems there is no other way to. The owner's manual is next to useless. Did I perhaps get a faulty charger?

jester_s1

It's connected wrong. That's the balance board you are plugged into, which only draws current out of individual cells to get the voltage to match. You should have a charge lead with the female end of that servo connector on it that plugs in to the output jacks on the right side of the charger. That's assuming there are jacks there where it's marked.

AllModesR/C

Here is what came with the charger. I see no way to connect to the battery. Am I missing something here?

JohnBuckner

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Yes as Joe indicated you have the batteries plugged improperly. In these last two pictures those appear to be Nicd flight and tx packs. These type of batteries have no balance ports and a single lead to charge them you use the pigtail you have in those pictures. The banana plugs will plug into one side of the charger (these are the main charging leads and not the balance plugs).

You will need to solder on a female J plug to those leads. When you charge these types of batteries this is where the single battery lead is plugged and the balance ports are not used.

I use leads I call Octopus' leads. They are cheap and have the banana plugs for the charger and around six different types of plugs on the other end and you just use the one you need. Can't right now but I will post a photo of those when I get back from the field this morning.

John

joebahl

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Allmodesrc because i build very light my electric planes can fly 15 or 20 minutes on a full charge . My Seaplane is 100 inch wingspan and only weighs 7 1/2 pounds with the 2- 3 cell 4000 lipo packs in her . Electric planes have come a long way and for the multi motor planes i enjoy building and foam ones its a great fit. Yep you need to solder the correct plug on on your new plug leads the balance plugs are only for lipos . BTW nice charger you bought i have its big brother . I have extra plugs and other nitro junk plus i think some futaba batterys that may still be new i had ordered but never used .I will charge them and dis charge(cycle) them as a test before throwing them in your flight box. After 30 plus years flying nitro i have a bunch of small parts like new fuel tanks and props . Let me know what size you need on props i have alot of them. Here is the flight box and it has some balsa dust on it from not using it in 3 years but i can clean it up ,couple of my harley parts in it also.lmao joe

JohnBuckner

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These are the photo's I promised this morning of the variety of Octopus adapters that you eventually need. And while not every brand of Life may not have a balance port adapter the commonly avalible ones I have certainly do and I absolutely would not charge without it. There were some early lipos without balance port adapters and you were lucky if you got 20 cycles out of them before they were useless and dangerous.

Threw in a couple of pics of my Lone Ranger Pail that serves to house the simple, cheap, four button fifty watt charger for any need that may arise at the field.

John

AllModesR/C

Can you give me a link to where I can buy a female J plug? Also what is a good glue or epoxy to use for the balsa wood on these airplanes? When removing the receiver from the airframe I though it was velcro-ed and pulled too hard and ended up ripping the receiver holder right out of air frame wood!

JohnBuckner

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http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...&I=LXTSJ1&P=ML


Here you go rather than buying single pig tails much cheaper to just buy an extension and cut it in two and you have a spare servo plug. For a charge station the wire size is not a problem and you need not use the sense wire (white one). One of the adapters I pictured in the photo above on the X-4 is just a single J female cut from an extension.

I do not recommend trying to buy just the plug and crimping yourself as that requires skill and a proper pair of crimpers and not all sold a such are not quite proper.

John

AllModesR/C

So if I get this extension and cut the male end off can I just twist tie and electrical tape the metal wires to the leads coming out of the charger? Would Jerry Rigging it like that be okay? I really don't feel like running out and buying a soldering iron.

j.duncker

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I prefer to use small choc block connectors rather than rely on twisted wires.

But pickup a cheap gas iron some electrical solder and some heatshrink so you can do a 'proper job'.

Bozarth

My Feedback: (15)

I have never heard of this nor encountered this phenomenon. Can others elaborate?

Kurt

joebahl

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I have the plug with banna ends on it for your charger to your battery just come and get your flight box and all the other stuff you need to get you flying before it snows. lol I PM you my number so give me a call soon. joe

joebahl

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Nicads form a habbit so if they are dead for a while or you just want to take care of them you CYCLE them .My charger has a cycle mode for nicads to do just that ,bring them to their peak charge then it puts a load on them and drains them to a safe level and back up to a full charge then my charger stops. Us old farts have delt with nicads for a long time till the last 15 years when nimph and lipos came out.My spectrum dx7 had nicads 1800 pack but after a year they were acting funny so i bought a nimph 2700 sanyo pack for my tranmitter . Once fully charged i can fly for a full day with out draining it enough to worry about anything.

AllModesR/C

Will do, I'll give you a call this week. Thanks Joe.

joebahl

My Feedback: (2)

Anytime ! So i took my new build out for a maiden tonight and a buddy gave it a hand toss and it flew well for 50 ft or so till i gave it full power and it torked itself to death.lmao Me thinks to much power scotty ! lol I have to rebuild the tail and put a much smaller motor on it but i will fix it and get it to fly. A plane plan from my friend in Germany Jurgen . Judi jetstream made from dollar tree foam and painted with home depo water base samples . Well so far i found you two eletric starters and two ni starters with chargers and one cable for the glo plug you could use from the flight box. The hanger 9 battery tester is for your fight pack to test to see if its still safe to fly it while out at the field. The plug wires to the left are for you battery you need to charge off of your charger. joe