maxtenet

Can anyone ID this thing. Got it from a friend in Russia. Looks to be about a 2.5cc

maxtenet

Lets try again 10 years later. Can anyone ID this thing?

Max

earlwb

Unfortunately, there is a huge lack of information about the Russian made engines. They can't even identify them in Russia either. There were numerous small groups of people making engines to use back during the cold war. But I would think it was probably a CSTKAM or RITM variant of a Tether car engine. Maybe even a variation of a KMD tether car engine. They made both 1.5cc and 2.5cc diesel and glow engines for tether cars at the time. Of course the anodizing on the engine is interesting. Usually the Russians were interested in the insides of the engine with little interest in how it looked on the outside. So I am not sure if it is really a Russian engine in that case.

74SEVEN7

As Earl says, its gotta be Russian. It appears to have 4 or 5 letters on the side - what are they ?

brokenenglish

Unfortunately, what Earl says above is correct. Russian engines sold through shops etc. were/are awful, and IMO not worth wasting time on.
However, I own a superb engine picked up from the Russian team at a World CL Champs during the nineties, and even the Russians who traded the engine couldn't put a name on it.
They just said that many high level aeromodellers worked in the aerospace industry, and made a few model engines, mainly for international competition, when workload allowed. And a few of those engines get sold...
One point that hasn't been mentioned is that, IMO, this one looks like a car engine.
There's a small but thriving nucleus of "modern" tether car enthusiasts in Europe and Scandinavia. It would be worth asking the European tether car brigade.

earlwb

Yes I agree it is very likely a tether car engine, although one could probably use it in a tether boat as well. Way back during the cold war there were many individuals or groups who were able to make limited runs of engines for competition and even training purposes. Some of the engines were not good, and others were really superb engines. They pretty much had to make everything for the engines, so they tended to loosely copy and use those design features from the popular engines of that era. Sometimes they made really good exampled and other times the engines were pretty bad. Quality varied as it depended on what they could get for materials at the time. But sometimes they had access to some really high quality materials and really good bearings too. Unfortunately, most of the engine makers didn't want anyone to know who made the engines as they might get in trouble for it. There were a number of individuals or small groups that did make some pretty good competition engines back then. I think they used to trade engines and gear at different international competitions, so some of these engines would appear on our side of the world. But some of the guys who learned how to make the engines way back then still make engines today under brands like the FORA or CYCLON names for example.

Now the government was also allowing for some engines to be made in larger quantities though. It was part of a government program at the time. The venerable 2.5cc MK-17 style or type of engine was made in vast numbers as a beginner training engine for people to use. They seem to have had something like 30 different factories making production runs of the engines over the years. Some of the engines were junk and others ran pretty good. There was a lot of variation in the engines as well as quality issues.

I sort of find the Russian engines to be interesting as they had to make the screws and bolts used in the engines too. So you can see hand made screws in many of them. Some of the engines had really good ball bearings in them from the aircraft industry too. One thing I liked about the cold war era glow engines was the Russian glow plugs were made using a really good platinum alloy with a lot of platinum in it. Plus the platinum coil was a little more thick than normal too. Thus the Russian glow plugs were probably the best made at the time and tended to last seemingly forever.

aspeed

According to my resident expert, it doesn't look like Russian (or popular cyrillic) letters. TAK might mean "this" but the next letter is hard to see but looks like a 7 or something mixed with a 4, and isn't part of the Russian or Serbian language. Maybe some other Russian state. I can't see if there is a I or something after that.

earlwb

Yeah the problem with the Russian engines is that when the iron curtain was up, they could have had people in Russia, Ukraine, East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia or Hungary making engines. Heck some engines could have been made in Uzbekistan and other places too. But at the time we would have considered them all to be made in Russia though.

maxtenet

Thanks for your effort, guys. I guess this will remain in the unknown category.

Max

coriolan

Unknown but not forgotten, it is almost certainly a one of a kind build using an existing crankcase with custom made parts for a special purpose. A genuine "Frankenengine" might have been meant for tether car as Earl was hinting(they were and are still very popular in eastern Europe, specially the smaller classes):
http://www.speedmodelcar.com/index.htm

Modern 2.5cc Tether cars engines example
A translation of the name on RCG:
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showp...postcount=6662