FrankRC1

My Feedback: (5)

What happened to them?

flyinwalenda

My Feedback: (5)

Good question. I have seen their air engines disappear and a lot of parts are in short supply.
Manufacturing issue or something else?
Can't find any information either way.

jester_s1

Went out of business a while back. Electric and gas has steadily cut into the glow market, and the hobby in general is in decline. So there simply wasn't enough business to support the number of manufacturers that were in the market. Others survived, and Super Tigre didn't.

speedracerntrixie

My Feedback: (29)

Great Planes happened to them.

1QwkSport2.5r

Exactly. I think they started going downhill from the moment World Engines lost the distribution - which was also right around the time the manufacturing moved to china. It seems the current distributor had "difficulty" communicating with the manufacturer or something. Sounded fishy anytime the distributor had anything to say about it. I think it a bit funny that the distributor didn't know what was going on with them. One would think the manufacturer and distributor would be pretty tight as one kinda needs the other to sell goods.

I dunno.

carlgrover

I still see a few NIB Italian Super Tigres at swap meets.

carl

1QwkSport2.5r

One of my local hobby shops has some NIB Tigre's on the shelf as well as several used ones. All Italian. I nabbed a NIB Italian .45ABC for $40.

RACE 66

Ahh.. hum.. "What's a hobby shop?"

Sarcastic as it sounds, so true. Sad to see the demise of ST. I to a ST fan. Have a NOS twin in arrears for a Mustang.

Race66

1QwkSport2.5r

I'm very fortunate to have 4 hobby shops with 20mi of my home or work. I work in construction and drive all over the area during the day, so sometimes it works out to stop by the shop on my lunch break. But I hear what you mean - many brick and mortar shops are closing up or already have. Sad to see - which is why I support my local shops as much as I can. I scored a NIP Davis diesel head for an OS .25 FSR for $5 at another local shop. What a steal!

Bob Paris

My Feedback: (13)

Hi Guys,
I loved the S.T. G90...I managed to get two for a P-38 I am building and bid on another one today. I love the engine...it liked a 13x6 Xore prop too and I do pray they come back. I am still seeking two more G90's if anyone has one of sale.
Soft Landings Always,
Bobb of Maui

jester_s1

The G90 was ST's best product, IMO. Torqey and reliable, it was a viable alternative to a 4 stroke when you needed to turn a big prop. I guess OS has a similar concept in their 95AX though.

1QwkSport2.5r

Don't forget about the S90/S90K - they were the predecessor to the G90 and made the same or better power. They could be made to run clockwise too (just have to rotate the front housing 90 degrees CCW).

Walther

My Feedback: (1)

Great Planes! Tower Hobbies, I started buying from them when they started advertising RC Modeler and you could just see that less and less of the products, and those were gone when they got there hands on them. I will not buy from them.

aspeed

If you don't deal with Tower or Great Pains, then you won't be buying much. That is pretty much all that is left and you can only get OS. Maybe that was their plan, IDK.

Walther

My Feedback: (1)

That is there exact plan! That is why I will not buy from them.

1QwkSport2.5r

There's Horizon Hobby too. They sell Evolution and Saito.

ira d

The reason we see less and less glow engines on the market is because there is less demand for them, I don’t think its Tower’s fault that Super Tiger has left the market.

TFF

All the cheap engines from the late 90s-early2000s did a number on the industry that no one noticed. GP got the ST line and had it made at the cheap places to have a big name with lots of profit, but the cheap engines left their mark. They helped turn up electric too as some of those cheap engines would just not run good. They were being warranted all the time making them not profitable. Makes it cheaper to just sell something good like OS that has few warrantees. Video killed the radio star; reality its killed the whole hobby.

1QwkSport2.5r

OS is and always has been (since they acquired the rights to them) Great Planes/Hobbico's cash cow. IMHO - ST was made to a far better standard of quality than OS has ever been - yet people still swear by OS... Oh yeah, a Neanderthal could tune an OS carb... Why would GP/Hobbico push ST - a lower budget engine with a slightly more complicated (but BETTER) carb - when they can sell/push OS to everyone at a higher price because an idiot can run one? Everyone puts OS a solid gold pedestal and GP knows that. At one time the ST .45 was $70 while the OS .46FX was $160. I've run both and at least of the examples I had/have, the ST outperforms the OS by 500-1000rpm on fuel with less nitro.

Regardless of the model engine business today, I'll continue to collect my ST engines. I'm trying like hell to find a NIB S29 ABC engine. I've been looking for years.

aspeed

I continue to buy Supertigers at swap meets as well. They were always a pretty good bang for the buck, and especially now at swap meets as they are out of favour. I have checked a few .40 and .46 motors and find them to be about equal between STiger and OS FX, and the AX behind a bit. Oddly enough the Evo .40 I got is 900 rpm better than those other .46s on the same 10-6" MA prop unmuffled. As a machinist, I would say the OS machining is pretty good, as well as the deburring. It beats STiger for sure. I don't need to get into the ABN thing as that is well known. A guy in my club just retired his ST .90 as he had no end of trouble with deadsticks. He is a mechanic, so I will give him the benefit of the doubt. I found the ST carb ok on my .40s though.

jester_s1

I'll disagree about OS being an inferior engine. ST engines were the boss for power before the Nelsons and Jetts came along, stayed just as good as they ever were. But the fact that an OS is easy to tune and is super reliable shows that it's well made. Parts tolerances are held to a tight standard, and the design is sound. I have owned an ST engine for years and will continue to use it until it stops working. But it has the class ST carb problem where it runs gurgling rich in the midrange which makes tuning for good top end, good idle, and good transition very hard to do. That problem was around for years, but ST never addressed it. OS makes the best carburetor on the market until you get to the high end engines.

ST died for one very simple reason- there wasn't a place in the market for them anymore. They were the high performance choice in their heyday, but then got surpassed by Nelson and Jett. OS makes a more reliable sport engine at a significantly higher price. Various Chinese companies make a cheaper engine. For a long time, Thunder Tiger was just about even with ST for price and made an easier engine to tune that still made good power. Most ST engines were ringed which took longer to break in. So most pilots didn't want to bother with that and the carb issues too. So there really wasn't a niche for ST anymore. They didn't innovate for a very long time, didn't respond to the changing market, and so in the end the company died. It's a shame too. A gasser G90 would have been a great engine for .60 size sport planes and probably would have sold well if the OS version is any indication. And why they never made factory modified race engines is beyond me considering how ubiquitous they were back in the day. Much like Fox, ST just sat back on its past success and stayed in the market until they couldn't anymore.

1QwkSport2.5r

The thing is - the Super Tigre carb has a third adjustment for the midrange that most OS don't have. The other fact remains that most people set ST carbs like other 2-needle carbs and that is why they have problems. The process to set them is a little different to get the same kind of performance. I've yet to have an ST carb not provide the same crisp performance that one can expect from a typical well-made 2-needle carburetor.

Hemikiller

My Feedback: (125)

Agree to this, the angle of the spraybar was the midrange adjustment. Between the dumbed-down manuals created by Hobbico that failed to even mention the midrange adjustment, and the incredibly poor Italian to English translation of the originals, it isn't surprising that people had problems tuning them. Back in the late 90's, we used to sell the Thunder Tiger GP42 as the low-buck beginner's engine, it was an incredibly friendly engine for a good price with near OS quality. This did lead a lot of people to use TT over ST and OS for their later models.

The guys who had experience and were dabbling in speed liked to used the ST G45 ABC engine with a pipe. We sold a lot of the F-20 style propjet ARFS back then.

Another good seller for us was the ST 90. It had a nice price with tons of power and made a great engine for many of the 60 size planes of the day. You did have to be careful with exhaust on it, as too little backpressure would give you a deadstick several minutes into the flight. It was pretty much standard to swap on a pitts style muffler in place of the giant log that ST supplied. You either blocked one of the outlet pipes, or installed a pump to make the engine run properly.

flygilmore

I see Super Tigers for sale every now and then.......is there any particular ones to stay away from? I wouldn't mind trying one or two out but have never ran any of them honestly.

1QwkSport2.5r

I think most of them are fine. I don't know much about the really old ones, but any that I've had (made in the last 30 years) have been good runners. My favorite is the Italian made GS45 ABC.