ya33a

I know that's usually the case, it may need to be made a little richer, I like the sound of the carby mod better

Gabrielsande

as suppose might need some fine tuning, but having the mixture richer  now means the pump is working better,as I mentioned before, the vacuum when the throttle is fully open is 0 ,so the fuel feed depends on the accumulated fuel ,having it working always means constant flow.

nudger

Hi
As anybody tried going back to the distribitors and moaned about their coughing carbs?

Nudge

affas

Seems like Saito are running from the responsibility of delivering a motor that works. <some few of the works but the carbs are defineteliy not good enough.

The rest is good. As mentioned earlier I swapped carb and ignition delivered by www.ch-ignition.com
Great guy and excellent service. I now have to engines in for service and upgrade

Here are the engine with startup and inflight

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bJpND3N2KM&feature=plcp[/youtube]

nudger

Hi
I don't think saito know how many disgruntled owners there are,due to people not telling the distribitors of the problem.Ive got 2 fg30s and 1fg57 all have got the coughing problem when going inverted.finely realising this isn't right I've moaned to my supplier ,they have got onto saito who have now sent me 3 factory tested carbs,which. I will try out this weekend.So hopefully my dead stick days are over and I might actually recommend a saito petrol engine.


Cheers Nudge

MercerAUST

Even a perfectly tuned and fueled engine can cough a bit if the elecronic ignition timing is out by a little. I just mention this because I have in the past experimented by just moving the Hall sensor a few degrees clockwise/anticlockwise which helped to get rid of the last remnant cough for an inverted FG-20 and FG-14. of course, these have different carby's and fiddling with the Hall sensor to change the spark timing a tad may be irrelevant.

nudger

Hi
flown my fg 30 6 times with the new modified carb today and can report it did not cough once.After 16 months of problems I think I can put this problem to bed.So to you out there with this problem get a new carb from saito.

Cheers Nudge

SrTelemaster150

All this confirms my preference for CDI ignition W/glow fuel.

More power, less problems than running gasoline.

The cost of the fuel once ignition is emplyed is not that much difference.

I get more power out of an FA180 running CDI on glow fuel than an FG36 on gasoline.

kwik

Thanks for the information Nudger. It confirms that what Affa did was sound.

He sendt it to C & H Igntion, and got it back with a new carb and ignition. Problem over.

My new ignitions from Saito are now at the local post office, but it is sunday. If I get problems still, I guess
I will do the same, because then it must be the carb. But I hope my problems are over now.

SR, you are confusing the isssue a bit here now; (But just a bit) It is not just switching from glow to gas.

For you it is obviously swtiching from glow to gas on a Saito engine. For us others, the switch was painless.

Until we tried Saito.....I have been using Zenoah gas for many years, and the problem then wast NOT whether the engine was running or not.

It was simply the sound; It sounds like a weed-wacker.

But the sound "problem" becomes infinitessly small if you have a prolem getting it running at all.

When I switched from glow to gas using zenoah, I got rid of a whole bunch of problems regarding glow.

Which I dont want to revert back to. If I have to ask C & H to put a Zama or Walbro on my FG-57, okay then. But I hope not.

My Fg-36 has been running like clockwork from day one. Knock on wood.

affas

Maybe Saito have found a fix but I don't want to use one extra minute troubling with bad saito ignition or carbs until it is really well tested.

Until this happens I will spend money on CH ignition

But I will contact Saito for returning my original stuff.

Where can Saito be contacted?

nudger

Hi Affas
You will after go to where you bought the engine from and go through them.They should be on your side and they will contact saito.

Good look.
Nudge

kwik

Nudger, does this concern FG-57's too, you think? Do you know what the modification is?

nudger

Hi kwik
The carb is the same on the fg 30 and 56 ,hence my coughing problem on both planes.the problem as I've heard it(second hand)or understand it is some chamber inside the carb is to large and causes some kind of air lock thus stopping the flow of fuel .

Have you got yours sorted yet?

Nudge

greg harrison

Hey y'all  I have a fg 20 I got right after it came out a few years ago. I got it and the h-9 p-51 blue nose ran great on the bench, put it in the plane and took off very scale, lifted off the ground 15 to 20 ft in the air and lost power tore one gear off when landed. Fixed the gear and adjusted more on the carb and tried it a few weeks later. Got it about 35 ft high and dead sticked it in but couldn't get it back before it hit. I wanted to take a sledge hammer to it but I just put it in a drawer in my shop. I got it out the other day to try it one more time. Put it on the stand and it wouldn't start. I sent it in to horizon service Friday it should be there tomorrow. When I get it back I will try it out and let y'all know. I just found this thread are I would have tried the pump mod. I did get the ch ignition  but never put it on. I am building a balsa USA 1/4 Fokker d-7 and would love to put the fg-36 on it for the 4 stroke sound but if they are still having these issues the 2 stroker may be the way to go. Lots of good info on this thread about these fg's.

Gabrielsande

hey again, as I said before,and all we know,these engines sounds and looks good, im using it in a goldwings mx2 kind of 3d light no much wood plane!. and the sound of it stopped me to change it for a more power less weight,and more reliable 2 st engine.(look back on the thread for the whole history)

But I just couldn't, mine still all original,apart of getting rid of the metal sparkplug cap,and added a ground cable instead,after that and tuning the carb a tad rich on the low end,and the high end tuned for peak power and then just 1/8 of the turn richer.
it never let me down,just the odd caugh time to time at high g manoeuvres and is not always, they dont like big props,stick to the manual on that,im using a17x6 apc since 2009, plane goes very well enough power to prop hang and pull away slowly,using just a 6v pack for the ignition.

but resuming scale guys, having a neat plumbing and electrics.having the tank close to the engine and at carb level as a glow (despite having a pump)valve clearance checked
and a good air flow for cooling,  for a scale plane will be the right engine and dont think will have much problems if I managed to get good results on my 3d one,

just spend some time tuning the engine doing just small corrections on the needles. I found it does the cough if I let the engine cool down,like flying it at low revs for a wile just cruising around and then apply full power when doing a sudden change of direction.like going in to a 90 degrees  climb.or going quick in to knife edge. but if I keep the throttle happy,and i guess the engine warmer it goes ok not a miss for the whole flight.

engine have few flights since 2009,in the same plane,no damage,hard landings or dead sticks, just one using a 18x6 menz prop on summer time,and I think it was overheating for the bigger prop,after that is being a good reliable good looking engine,and Iam quite happy with it.

take care guys and have good flights!

Didg

I've had an FG-36 since just after they came out and it has never ran right, all the usual problems, so I boxed it up to sell about 6 months ago and haven't got around to advertising it.

Today I saw an add for the FG-21 with an "improved" carb and also an FG-36B in the pipeline. What have they improved and what are the chances of getting these improvements retrofitted for free?

kwik

Yes, I got mine sorted, BUT;

Here is a typical story of mine; ( Am I the only clumsy guy around, I wonder.......[:@])

I put in the new ignition, and the FG-57 started quite easily up, and ran as a clock! It was wonderful to hear that sound again !

However, since I had experimented with several ignitions, cleaned the carb, tried this, tried that, I must have positioned the new
sensor a bit off, because now I got 500 rpm's less that I was used to.

I didn't have the stomach to take off the cowling AGAIN ( must have been off maybe 20 times this summer....) so I figured,
what the heck, I'll try it.

What I did'nt remember, was that the last time, some weeks ago now, I did'nt tight'en the propeller nut as hard as I should have.
It was just for another test back then, you know...but forgotten now....must be getting old....[:@]

So, I took off, after a long run; The plane wasnt as agile as I was used to. 500 rpm's less, you know. Anyway, up it went.

The airfield was new to me; Never flown there before. It was a bit windy. Haven't flown the Corsair for5 months, 500 rpm's less.....

And dont you know; First I managed to stall it while flying straigh ahead downwind. The plane must have flown slower than I was
used to...it just dropped the nose straight down. Luckily I saved it, but it was close....for a while I could hardly see it in between some trees... [:-]

Next, the propeller came loose....I managed to "glide" in towards the runway, it happend on a nice spot, but it was windy, I misjudged
some distances, and landed 10 meters short. Broke one Robart leg. That was the only damage.

Have some new legs from Robart now, a Mejzlik 22x10 propeller, and ready to try again when the wheather improves.

profmb

Hi all,
My story!!

It seems as though these Saito engines can be reliable one moment and then the next they can refuse to start. I have two FG30's and they had previously run really well. One continues to do so. However I had an accident with the other and this damaged the carb fixing to the cylinder head. When it kep on comng loose I had realsied that some of the threads in the head had been stripped so I got MacGregor in the UK to replace the head. Since that time it has never worked like it did. So i took it back out of the plane (an EG MXS-R) and put it back on the test stand. I got it running really sweetly - why it would not run like that in the plane I do not know. Thinking I had my troubles fixed it then ran for a while and then stopped. No coaxing helped. In checking the spark, I found that I was now getting no spark at all. The ignition unit had died on me!

I then bought a RCEXEL ignition ( this is a Hall effect not an Induction sensor like the Saito) so I set up the timing protractor and advanced the sensor. After hours of trying I could not get the engine to fire properly. Not only that but the RCEXEL cap is such a tight fit ion the plug that I cut my fingers trying to remove it! Weston UK were converting a Magnum 1.80 to petrol for me and in discussing with them they suggested that the Runtronic system would be much more reliable - so I sorted that - and hey it ran so sweetly. Thinking that was then end of my problems I was so relieved. However I went back to it an hour later and with no settings changed, it refused to start.

I took it down to Weston and we set it up on a test stand. They had exactly then same issues as me. It would run once then refuse to start. We have tried for hours to get it to run and sometimes it would splutter into life and then die off again. So they took the carb apart thinking it was fuel starvation, and put jets of high pressure air through it - it was clean as a whistle. Still no joy. We have concluded that it is now that something in the inner workings in the carb that has failed. So they are now going to fit one of their custom carbs and a fuel regulator, because I have lost faith in Saito carbs.

It makes me wonder how long my other FG30 will hold out for. Certainly the Magnum 1.80 runs really well with a tuned pipe and it may well be that I move over to these because the Saito carbs seem overly complex for what they need to do.

Cheers

w8ye

My Feedback: (16)

You are lucky to live close enough to Weston to take engines there.

affas

The original carb and ignition are crap. Alot of trouble for me and a wrecked plane :censored:

I converted both parts from www.ch-ignitions.com with great results.
Starts easy, excellent throttleresponse and I have not had a single hickup since I got it back from Adrian!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZOgY3fTWrc[/youtube]

sharam

My Feedback: (2)

affas,

Did you just get the CDI complete conversion kit for $150?

Please provide details re what parts you purchased?

Thanks.

affas

I am not sure if you can order the complete kit via website yet. I did send him a mail and he made a complete package for me

sharam

My Feedback: (2)

Great, thanks for the reply!

BadAzzMaxx

A standard RCexl with the universal timing bracket will work if installed like the picture below.

Milton

velottatv

I have the FG36 and have all the stuttering, coughing issues everyone mentions. Yesterday I switched from a wooden prop to a composite that was one inch shorter. The motor performed fantasticly!! I was so amazed. It ran the best ever. I noticed a little different sound but paid no attention to it until I got home and flipped the plane over to clean it.

What I found was the canister was missing from the muffler. Without the back pressure the motor ran much better. This, I believe, was the reason for the performance improvement and not the prop change.

Normally this engine has a difficult time starting for a second flight. Yesterday it flipped on the first flip.

Beats me but thought I would share.