Carosel43

If any engine can gain advantage from improvements to the induction and ignition its the saito 450. The induction is really not good at evenly distributing the fuel and that holds back the engines max performance. I was thinking of doing an experiment with an impeller in the back but I now have a buyer for the engine so I will forever wonder if It couldhave been improved!

Carosel43

BJ I got a quick reply from the glow people and this is what they have to say.

'The price for the GSP Multi-5 is £65.00 + P&P for the 6600mAh unit, a 7400mAh option that is £72.00 + P&P and finally £75.00 + P&P for the 9200mAh unit

P&P to Australia or the US would use Royal Mail International Signed-For service and would be around £10.00 due to recent price increases by the Royal Mail.

We have supplied GSP Multi-3,4,5 and 7 units to customers over the last 5 years both within the UK, Europe, US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

To order they can email us (sales at glowswitch dot com) to discuss options that are available such as bullet connectors on plug leads (smaller holes through firewall for improved structural integrity), long Servo/Rx/LED leads, Presto plug connectors, additional GlowPack batteries etc'

Just for your info guys the units come with crocodile (alligator..whatever) clips on the glowleads,batteries provided are 2.4v sub C NiMh packs and I have found the 6600mAh option suitable for at least 5 flights worth of power when I was using glow upto half throttle. Now I only have glow upto about 15% I assume I will get a lot more than that. In reality though 5 flights in a day is likely to be enough, and given the mechanical failure rate of my engine im lucky to get that many flights before it breaks!

Heli-NuBee

Thanks Adrian, as I said, I'm absolutly sure that the CDI system would be an advantage on the Saito 450.

BJ64, perhaps I should give you my perspective about how I would decide on a system for my engines. There are advantages and disadvantages to all of the available systems and one's pocketbook is also a consideration. As you know, glow multi-cylinder engines can be ignited in a number of ways. The simplest and lowest cost option is to use an external battery through a jack using the supplied glow plug wires supplied with the engine. Once the engine is started there is no way to re-lite a lost cylinder and idle is usually a little higher than with glow or ignition support but it is very inexpensive. There are a number of on board glow systems available that have quite a range in price but the most well known seem to be the Microsens and the McDaniels systems. I mention only those brands because I do not have any experience with other brands. Both the Micosens and McDaniels systems are close in price and if memory serves me right, the total cost of my seven cylinder system was in the $225 US dollars range. The on board systems offer more reliable idle and the opportunity to re-lite cylinders if necessary. The systems I use are a bit on the pricy side and I am sure there are some less expensive options (like those from Hobby King but they have bad reviews). The CDI system probably offers the best reliability and may give some increase in fuel economy and performance but it is probably the highest cost option. My choice would be the most reliable system that I can reasonably afford. If Adrian sells his CDI system for just a bit more than the glow systems, I would go that way. If the CDI systems are a lot more, I would have to give the glow systems serious consideration. I can tell you that the price he quoted me on the 450 when I contacted him a few months ago was well within reason. The only reason I went with the Microsens on the 450 was that he was not quite ready at that time and I wanted to get my plane done and in the air. That is my perspective and really this whole thing comes down to a matter of preference, choice and your pocketbook. I would love to see Adrian offer you his CDI system at the same cost you would pay for the Microsens system and for you to give your feedback and experience with the system to us 400 owners. It would not be fair for him to give you a system for free but a reduced cost for demonstration should be reasonable. I know you are not an expert so I believe that would be a great demonstration of the CDI system for the average RC Flyer.

Best wishes and good safe flying

Heli-NuBee (AKA Roger the radial rabbit)

SrTelemaster150

I'm not Adrian. I'm just someone that discovered the joys of C&H CDI W/my Saito FA150 over 16 years ago, perhaps long before Adrian even knew C&H Igntions existed.


I have no official afiliation W/C&H Ignitions except for my frinedship W/Adrain that came about from his excellent customer service & many long phone converstions about CDI conversions.

Adrian does sometimes do favors for me as I am somewhat of an R&D source for him & my long experience W/C&H CDI helps newcomers feel a little less intimidated so it probably helps his sales.. If he sends someone W/an ASP 400R5 a system it will be at or very near cost. Adrian is somewhat of a "cottage industry" in that he works a full time job & runs C&H ignitions in his spare time. He cannot afford to go out & buy every popular GI engine to develope systems for them. He needs owners of those engines to help him W/testing.

I put my order in for the Saito FA450R3D a few days ago & will be setting it up as soon as I get it. It is the same priciple as the 5 & 7 Cylinder sytems so whatever I post will apply to any 3 cylinder, 5 cylinder or 7 cylider radial set-up for CDI.

Why do I "push" CDI so enthusiastcally?

Because there is so much dis-information out there about how complicated CDI is. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is a bit technical to set-up, but once it is dialed in, you are done fiddling W/needle settings like a GI system OBG or not. W/cdi, you will have a rock solid ignition timing event un-affected by A/F ratios, ambient temperatures, humidity, barometric pressure, etc. You will be done W/setting the needles everytime the weather changes when you go out to fly.

I promote CDI because, on larger engines it pays for itself in short order & it is a joy to live with. It's just about like starting your car to go for a drive. Just start it up & go. The slight addition of power that comes W/signifiacnt fuel savings is a big bonus that you will never get W/glow ignition. I want to help others to enjoy the happiness I have found W/CDI ignitions.

So anyway, if anyone is intimidated by CDI but would otherwise like to give it a try on their ASP 400R5, I will post a how-to video soon.

Kmot

My Feedback: (24)

I do not have the Microsens 'Glow Balancer' option on my system, just the metal heatsink encased resistor. It works fine. No doubt the Glow Balancer works even better. But it is not an absolute necessity in my opinion.

Heli-NuBee

[quote]ORIGINAL: SrTelemaster150


I'm not Adrian. I'm just someone that discovered the joys of C&H CDI W/my Saito Fa150 over 16 years ago, perhaps long before Adrian even knew C&H Igntions existed.


I have no official afiliation W/C&H Ignitions except for my frinedship W/Adrain that came about from his excellent customer service & many long phone converstions about CDI conversions.

OK, thanks SrTelemaster150 for the clarification.

Heli-NuBee (AKA Roger the radial rabbit)

Kmot

My Feedback: (24)

BJ, for the battery for my Microsens I had previously made up a 8000mAh LiPo from left over cells. However, for the airplane I am putting together I purchased a 5000mAh single cel LiPo from Hobby King.

BJ64

I'm running a converted ModelEngines 6V NiMh pack on mine at the moment, Tom.

Pretty sure it is this one: http://www.modelengines.com.au/retai...ef_cat_id=BIBA

I opened the pack up and fipflopped every second cell to create a parallel 1.5V (1.2V??) pack with a decent amount of oomph behind it, and it's worked well so far.

Mind you, I'm still only running my 400 in on the bench, so that mAh rating might be a tad on the low side for a glow-driver during flight.

BJ

Heli-NuBee

BJ, the Microsens systems are pretty power hungry, I run 5600 MAH single cell Lipos on my systems.

Heli-NuBee (AKA Roger the radial rabbit)

BJ64

Yah... I gather that they eat the Amps pretty well.

My little 3600 made-up pack does me for a few tanks while I'm still runnning in.

I'm figuring to use up the first gallon of fuel on the test bench and do the valve clearances again at the end of that lot - particularly since I've done a rebuild and didn't match the tappets (though it had only run for about 5 mins anyways). Might even check the valve clearances in a couple of small-tanks time too.
BJ

Carosel43

BJ in flight i would expect alower draw on the glow driver as you will be at higher power settings than on the bench as we dont tend to run the engine at 70% power on the bench for prolonged periods.

jmmt

who knows what engine was first manufactured the ASP MAGNUM FS400 AR or the OS FR7-420, which is a copy of which?

SrTelemaster150

The ASP FS400R5 is an enlarged copy of the discontinued OS 300R5

The OS 300R5 preceeded the ASP FS400R5 by many years.

The ASP FS400R5 has anything in common W/the OS FR7-420 as far as design & configuration. The fact that the lifters interchange was probably because OS wanted to use existing tooling from the 300R5..

Carosel43

Telemaster is correct, although I didn't know the 300R5 was discontinued as it still shows up on the OS site and is still available here in the UK.

One thing I did hear (once upon a time) was that OSsold their engine designs to sanye so they could essentially make engines under licence. It makes business sense as OS would make some money out of every ASP,SC or Magnum engine sold, but equally its a little risky. In any event I have no clue how true it is, as I say I just heard it once so it could be a load of rubbish


In other news my 400 is alive again now to go flying and break it!

BJ64

Why don't you just fly it without breaking it instead?

LoL

Crappy day here 2day - been bench-testing some electrics for a mighty Midget Mustang. Good to go there for completion now (and hopefully a maiden when this rain finally abates).

Have a 'Dolphin' nitro-burner 30" boat that I haven't started since I bought it (yonks ago), so there's a bit to do there too. Carby was all gunked up and throttle cable needs some TLC, so I hope to pull the rip-cord on that one tomorrow to see if it runs at all. Can't seem to find a 'Manual' anywhere - it's supposed to have a 15XCP motor in it, but the only markings I can find anywhere so far are 'ASP'. Hopefully, there's a model number stamped on it somewhere and I can get some more info on it. Managed to find a thread talking about the 15XCP - hsn: 3-3.5 turns out, lsn 2 turns out - so I might start with that and see if I can get it to spring to life.

And if it stays fine for long enough tomorrow, I'll of course break out the ASP 400 and run another couple of tanks of juice through it. Looking forward to that

DOH! Just remembered, I was at the LHS getting 685MG's for the Corsair, and forgot to get a tub of Castor Oil for pre/post run oil. Darn... I'll just give it another gutful of WD40 via my sexy new nose-cone "Oil Hole"

BJ

kgo068

Hey BJ...We've had 37mm of rain here over 24hrs ..and its going to Melbourne! Dont know when I'll be going flying again. So I should pull my finger out and do some fixing up on my planes as well.

BJ64

Oh... JOY!

Can't you stop it at the border of Mexico?

LoL

Yeh - pretty ordinary down here too. We copped about 30mm+ today too. With more to come rolleyes:

It was supposed to be windy - little rain. Which meant I could have done a bit of Slope. Instead, the wind died out (and came from 180deg where I was going to do a tad of soaring), and it just kept on raining. All day. So that put the kybosh on any cliff-top expectations. And the local field will be flooded to buggery if and when the sun decides to shine - but I've still got the option of flying a few belly-lander foamies there if it just stops freakin raining (done the 'fly in the rain with electrics' thing, and promptly shorted ESC's/Rx's & Motors. Poo-bum).

So the plan now is to get the test-stand out into the back yard and bed the 400 in a bit more.

I'm really happy with my rebuild. VERY happy, in fact. It was a total buzz to prime the motor, push the electic starter onto the prop... and 'Vroooommm'... it was instantly alive!

I have gained so much experience and confidence stripping my 400 down and rebuilding all the bearings etc. Reckon I could do it in my sleep now (ok, haven't done the top-end yet, but I reckon that shouldn't be all that much of a hassle).

Soooo... hopefully some nitro fumes in the morning

BJ

tim750r

Well, the weather is quite nice here, but that didn't stop it from raining on my parade!

I decided it was time to run the new 400, so I've spent some time getting it nicely lubed etc. Sorted out the 'frankenstein' glow driver (more on that in another post if anyone is interested!) so it was all going as planned. After installing the glow plugs, one cylinder showed a rather unusual 'slurping' noise and on further invstigation, you could see fluid bubbles around the head/barrel join. Anyway, long story short this is what I found when I got the head off...

tim750r

A couple of things that worry me:

1 - Where did the missing piece of shim go? Its definitely not in the barrel!
2 - Should I now embark on a major strip down to see if there is anything else wrong?

Oh. and it looks to me like the engine has been run before...I didn't think the factory ran them?

Just Engines have the shim (same as ASP FS80) for about £1 so that's one good thing!

This was purchased from HK a little under 1 year ago by the way, and its the newer version with the polished crankcase and black rocker covers.

BJ64

Um.... was that a brand-new, ex-box - never been started before motor?

If so, I reckon you might have copped a "Friday Arvo" job.

Those shims are a right p.rick to keep in place when you're trying to mate the head back down onto the pot itself.

They sit in the 'head groove' (for compression ratio??), and I couldn't find a way to mount them on the cylinder first and then bolt the head down onto the rest of the assembly. You're blind-sided.

Instead, the surface tension of the castor oil seems to hold them in place up in the head groove if you're lucky. And if you're aware of it.

I bet the dude that bolted that head down onto the cylinder didn't pay enough due-care - just whacked it on, maybe felt a bit of a resistance when trying to screw the head down... and just kept on going.

The reason I say this? I saw a mark on one of my cylinder sleeves where whoever it was that was screwing the head down didn't realise he was about 3mm out on that particular head-bolt. Reamed a nice mark into the top fin on that cylinder...
rollleyes:

BJ

PS - I reckon that bit of missing shim has been ingested by the motor and spat out in lil bits of burnt glowing metal along the way [X(]

Maybe check the inlet and outlet valve seats to see if they've been scored at all? Any idea if that pot is low on comression?

I haven't examined those shims all that well, though I suspect they're Stainless, and not Aluminium...

tim750r

The engine is brand new out of the box from fresh HK stock last August.

I guess they must run them at Sanye...it was properly packed in its wooden box and the accessory bags were all sealed. The prop nut still had its plastic sleeve on so I'd be surprised if it was a rogue 'customer return' unit from HK.

Whoever put it together must have known something wasn't right - the head bolt on the lower left of the photo had to cut a semi-circle out of the shim!

The barrel doesn't show any sign of scoring, and a brief look at the valve seats show they are smooth. It certainly didn't have any compression in that cyl. before, but I won't know the final outcome until I get the replacement shims. Unless you all think it would be ok to run on one shim? Low nitro (5%) I promise...!

BJ64

When you say "Unless you all think it would be ok to run on one shim?" - how many shims have all the other pots got?

Or did you mean to say 'run one cylinder without a shim' ?

If so, those shims are really thin - it may be there for compression ratio purposes... or it may be there to ensure that the top of the piston doesn't collide with/brush an extended valve.

It's only a thou or two, but I'm not sure if it would be safe running without it.

I doubt it's function is to act as a cylinder seal - it's extremely thin, and backed-up inside a pronounced head groove which you'd think would seal pretty much on its own. And I'd expect a seal to be made of copper - but not always.

Not really qualified to offer much more than my opinions, but it's no wonder you had bugger-all compression on that cylinder - it must have leaked like a sieve being misaligned across the cylinder head like it was.

BJ

jaav

BJ64. The mighty mustang..is that the same one that was in the RC groups fourm??

I bought one 18 months -2 years ago Im trying to remember the site that I got it from, it was a Modified bird. Very fast. my concern was the aileron linkage has way too much slop..She was destroyed at high speed from flutter..

tim750r

Each pot should have 2 - actually ASP call them gaskets in the parts list, so maybe they are there to provide the seal? Mine measures 4 or 5 thou on a caliper. One of mine is still in tact, but I don't think I'm going to chance it - just have to be patient and wait for parts...

BJ64

Yep - same one.

Been reading "Wobbie"s posts from the past and watching YouTube vids etc to build mine.

Decided to go the light-build option - Scorpion 2221-6 outrunner on 3S. I've re-opened the thread on RCG to post new stuff, if you're interested.

Re the aileron linkage, I've got one real saggy one (port side). Has something to do with the way the "arm pin" slots into the aileron itself - will post more info over there.

BJ