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Joined: 1/21/2004
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From: Lebanon,
TN, USA
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quote:
ORIGINAL: jigawatt
you have to tune them ALL the time. Total bollocks. I don't have to tune my engine but twice a year. A good engine will hold it's tune well, only a poor quality or neglected engine will require constant adjustment.
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. engines require constant upkeep. Hrm....Air filter every five tanks....chisel the nitro mud off the block once a month....that sums up the maintenance I have to give my nitros. They run great, by the way.
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and the vehicles are ALWAYS getting dirty. So do electrics. Getting dirty is a sign you're having fun.
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On top of it all, there are so many engine manufacturers that have low quality control. people these days go for the cheapest thing they can get their hands on... almost always, those engines are rubbish.
That's why you don't buy a chinese engine. Or any RTR using one. Lemme break down how the brand name RTR engines fair.
AE's engines are made by Thunder Tiger. TT has been giving OS hell for years in the aircraft side, so it stands to reason their car engines are reliable.
HPI's engines are done in-house AFAIK. I haven't heard of anyone saying "BAh this HPI engine blew up it sucks" and having three pages of people nodding accordingly.
Traxxas...well okay their engines are unstable pieces of junk. TRX 2.5s and 3.3s can be made to work, and when coerced they do make quite a bit of power, but if you can get one of these things to hold a tune and last long you aren't going to be a newbie asking for such advice in the first place. Either that or you have an old Pro .15, in which case it's just a weak-kneed paperweight.
Losi's engines are also quite reliable. People are putting the same engines they have in their RTRs in other trucks as replacements. They can't be that bad.
quote:
ORIGINAL: electricrc68
well what i heard was you need to take the engine apart and clean it every 5 gallons?
No, you don't...okay lemme try to set everything straight here. There seems to be a ton of misinformation floating around the Redcat forums about nitro. Now I know why I don't float over this way very often...
First of all, with nitro, you get what you pay for. There's no such thing as a cheap nitro. These engines can be as reliable as a Honda Civic or as touchy as a PMSing supermodel. 25% of that is maintenance. 25% of that is tuning. 50% of that is the quality of the engine. IF you buy a cheap knockoff chinese engine you will have to rebuild it frequently. You buy a quality, well designed Japanese, Italian or American engine and it will be quite reliable. But even that cheap knockoff chinese engine will run okay if you know what you're doing and treat it right, and those pricey, well built engines will become cantankerous piles of junk if you neglect them. If you really want a painless, "Gee this is just as simple as brushless" experience with Nitro, you first need to get a good, high quality engine, then you need to take care of it. Which, as I'm about to point out, is incredibly easy.
Here's my typical session schedule when I go to run one of my cars.
1: Radio check
2: add fuel
3: prime engine
4: Verify glow ignitor is working
5: final radio check
6: Start engine
7: This is the fun bit. Just imagine an hour of shenanigans involving donuts, drifts and speed runs here. And a few barrel rolls, because I crash a lot.
8: Run the engine out of fuel, either by pinching the line or just simply running the tank dry.
9: Shut radio gear off
10: Bring it in, put the misc supplies away, set the car on a paper towel so the oil drips don't stain my bed.
11: go watch Top Gear. Or maybe start GTA: San Andreas. Or come on here and set some people straight. Who knows.
My between runs service looks like this:
1: Is anything broken? No? Sweet.
2: Clean and re-oil the air filter.
3: Scrape the dirt off the side of the engine if applicable.
4. Swap Rx duracells if previous run showed low power.
5. Refill fuel bottle.
Major bi-monthly services include:
1: Check all fasteners. Tighten loose ones.
2: Inspect moving joints, bearings and brakes
3: Inspect servos
4: major chassis cleaning
5: Pull the glow plug and see what it looks like
As you can see, nitro is no harder to maintain than electric. Every single maintenance thing I do has a parallel on an electric car. For example, in my between runs service, for item 2 you could replace air filter with ESC heatsink. And remove the oil part. Item 3 of this same list doesn't even change the device it's servicing, just swap "engine" for "motor". I have a feeling electric motors don't like being coated in half of Tennessee any more than glow engines do. Item 5 is replaced with "Recharge battery pack" for an electric. Or Item 5 of my bi-monthly service could be replaced with pulling the motor and either checking/replacing/lubing the bearings if BL, or checking the brushes as well if not. Item 2 can simply omit brakes unless you converted a nitro using one of the older kits that maintained the mechanical brakes(Or opted to do so on a newer conversion). So anyone who's going "BAAAWWWWW NITRO IS HARD TO MAINTAIN" is either A: Mechanically inept, B: lazy, or C: A fanboy.
Now as for engine life, I'm going to assume we're discussing a modern, well built engine that's well maintained.
These engines are incredibly simple. They have less moving parts than you have fingers. Their ignition system is entirely automatic. There isn't really much to go wrong in there, and when it does, it's not hard to figure out why and correct the issue. A typical engine lifespan is anywhere from 6-12 gallons for a well cared for engine. Well made ones, such as my OS .18 CV-RX, will trend towards the upper end of the spectrum. A few have even blasted past 12 gallons like it was their fifth tank! If you take good care of your engine you will never have to crack it open until the day it loses enough compression to not run anymore.
Now, because of their simplicity, if they A: Have a functional, lit glow plug, B: Are mechanically sound and C: Have a suitable air/fuel mixture, they will run. 9 times out of 10 an engine that fails to start is because the glow plug isn't working, and the other 1 time is usually the carb being out of whack. Of the 9 times the plug isn't working, 7 of those are usually just a discharged or malfunctioning glow ignitor. The other two times are actually the plug itself, which you should always have at least one good spare of since they're considered consumables anyways. It's rare that an engine crops up with a no-start that can be traced to item B up there, mostly because by that time the engine's so down on power when it is running that a worn piston/sleeve is already a known fact. Fixing that isn't exactly difficult, either. Usually eight(12 for engines with an on-board starter) screws are all that's keeping that worn out engine from being rebuilt. You can literally get one apart during one average commercial break and have it back together again before the next one.
If you buy a well-built nitro and take good care of it you will have years of fun and get many gallons of life out of the engine. Buy a cheap knockoff, or even sometimes a well built but used one, and you'll be wondering what us nitro nuts see in these little things.
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My stash:
1 rally modded NTC3, 1 HeliMax Axe CX Nano, 1 Hobbico NexSTAR.
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All Forums >> RC Cars, Buggies, Trucks, Tanks and more >> Redcat Racing Support >> do you think i should give nitro a try? 
do you think i should give nitro a try? - 
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being junk that aint worth having........ I have some of this so called junk and it works great for me and I know this is also true for a butt load of others on here...........! 