cummins driver

My Feedback: (31)

Nitro engines are NOT as complicated as people make them out to be. I had bad luck with my first nitro engine. I chalk most of that up to me being 13 years old at the time as well as buying one of the cheapest nitro r/c's that i could find. Since then, I have yet to blow up an engine or have one that I just couldnt get to run(unless it was worn too bad).

Many people claim these engines are more complicated than weedeater engines, real vehicle engines, etc... but in all reality they arent. They have no computer controls, no plug wires/distributors, pumps, camshafts, sensors, valves or anything of that nature. They have VERY few moving parts and if you have fuel, compression, a sealed crankcase, and a hot glow plug, these things should run. I have been working on engines of all kinds for a long time. Im a mechanic for a landscaping company and the weedeater engines make me pull my hair out at times. Whats worse is that most of the newer walbro carb's on them wont allow you to adjust the needles, which forces you to buy a new carburetor. I have also been working on my boss' fathers truck which had an erratic misfire and backfiring through the throttle body that had me doing a lot of scratching my head. My point is that if you have a little mechanical ability and take the time to seal the engine up and make sure you have a good plug, fuel lines, etc, these engines are relatively trouble free and easy to run with only small adjustments needed at times. Of course they can have problems just like anything else, but for the most part they are fairly easy to troubleshoot and run because there is nothing much to go wrong. Honestly, the power these engines make at the crazy RPM they turn is really impressive to me as well. Not many other types of engines can handle 30-40k rpm reliably and make this much power per cubic inch (or centimeter in this case). And brushless does have more instant torque, however as far as useable power goes, Nitro's are not far behind if at all.

It just gets old seeing everyone reccomend electric because nobody seems to be able to turn a screwdriver to tune an engine anymore. People get scared away from nitro because of the other newbies who have never tried nitro and told them that the engines are extremely hard to run and dont last long or that they arent as powerful as brushless. This scares a lot of people who are interested in nitro off and they may never try it because of the horror stories that people who have never owned a nitro seem to be able to put together.

And this is all coming from someone who runs both nitro and brushless/lipo. No real bias here. Sorry for the rant, I just think it needed to be said.

Eric

Nitro Racer 18

I'm voting this up.

ramp4ge

Nitro just takes more care. Like you, I blew up my first Nitro car (A Kyosho Sandmaster..Wow, talk about oldschool). Broke it in properly and had it running great, but I was 12 and I found out that turning that needle valve in made the engine rev higher! How high could I make it rev!? That engine didn't last long. Newbie mistake.

I've only had one engine outright fail on me. The Thundertiger mill in my RC10GT RTR that I bought because I was bored and had nothing better to do. The conrod failed on about the 3rd tank in the break-in process. Thundertiger and AE wouldn't warranty it because it had fuel run thru it. I think that's where a bit of my discontent regarding Thundertiger mills comes from.

All in all, nitro and electrics both have their ups and downs. Nitro is a hell of a lot cooler if you ask me. The smells, the smoke, the tuning. It's just more impressive. Electric is expensive in the beginning (Especially if you're running a large setup with multiple lipo batteries) but in the long run, with fuel prices going up, it's hard to say which would be the cheaper in the long run.

As for complexity, a 2-stroke nitro engine is about as simple as they come. But even a nitro engine can get pretty complex. A big 4-stroke with electric combustion and a pumper on the back..Oh boy...I don't think you'll need to worry about that in a car for a long while tho. Lol

For an absolute beginner, I'll always recommend an electric car. A simple one at that. But for someone with a car or two under their belt and wanting to try out nitro, you shouldn't stop yourself. Just be sure to break it in gingerly and tune it right and it'll last you a long time.

And as I recently found out, seal it up!

I still want a .28-sized gasoline mill tho. Someone get on it!

cummins driver

My Feedback: (31)

Even a newcomer can handle nitro fine if you have a slight amount of mechanical ability, and you have a little patience. Thats really about all it takes.

And let try not to make this a nitro vs electric because thats not my intent[8D] I just wanted to get out the fact that some people over react when it comes to talking about nitro's.

Eric

sloppyG

really, my reason to not run nitro is more about noise than anything else

even as a RC rookie, getting an engine to run properly was not hard

I don't run nitro anymore, but it's not because it's hard to get an engine running

DaveG55

That pissed me off so bad the first time I ran into it!!!!
Still does when I think about it. And all because of some Fed BS about emissions. They don't take into account how far out those carbs can get and still run. Well, sorta run. But why stop me from tweaking it back into spec??? I just don't get it.

By the way, that first one I had I drilled out the crap keeping me from the needles and adjusted it anyway!!! That one is still running and running well.

The Nitro engine stuff I pretty much agree with. They're just not that hard and I had my first one when I was 10 y/o. Back in '65 they only had one needle but I had it running fine for 2 years before I flew it into a tree...

ramp4ge

Lol. Hell my Nitro Sport only had one needle.

rooker

My Feedback: (1)

yeah, so far, a year into nitro, it has not been that hard.  if you have a good motor!!!  the first one I tried to tune was worn out.  once I got a good one, it was no trouble tuning.  if you are mechanically inclined you should be OK.  Now the people that get on this forum and have to ask what size wrench to use,etc,etc, they may have issues with nitro!!!!

schuttman

I build REALRACECARS form chassis to ENGINETUNING and everything in between, burn up a full roller race engine!!!!!! R/C enginge 3screws 1glow plug what is the problem????
See the elect guys that bit**h about nitro, are the guys that are just plain LAZEEE.... and all they know is to put a elect motor and lets go race.

HpiTrax383

My Feedback: (2)

its about time someone said it. its sucks beacause alot of people are on the brushless bandwagon and there are less new nitro kits coming out. i dont have anything against brushless and i own one but i only use it if i go to a indoor track or i just feel like a quick drive in the front yard. I agree with cummins driver, its amazing that these little engines rev so high and can take a beating. my first nitro was a pro.15 rustler and thats the only nitro motor i blew up because it lost signal and went wide open into a creek a revved until the rod broke.

The_Shark

my second hobby-grade car was a abused evader with a abused Cv-r engine. it gave me all kinds of hell, mostly because it had 0 pinch, as soon as i threw a ofna red-head in there, ive never had a issue with nitro again.

im a gear head and love the fact that such a small car can house such a strong little working engine, and how it can survive GALLONS of fuel. and im sorry, if someone approches you at the park running your electric they think its like a toy, when its super fast, its just a fast toy, but when its nitro and they can hear and smell that engine, its so much more, there is that WOW factor.

i also like electric because its easy, but ive also toasted ESC's and engines before.

i just got done porting a vertex .18 in my new evader, it took me 20minuts and now its just wicked wicked wicked its my first one and now i have to restrain my self from doing the other two engines i have. this little bugger just screams[X(]

HpiTrax383

My Feedback: (2)

haha shark, your right about the electric car being a toy. one day when i was at the local rc track driving my brushless slash, a guy on a bike stopped and wathced, he said "thats a fast little toy". for some reason i felt like all the money i put into my slash was wasted to be called a toy. he waited to see me drive my firestorm and he said "thats really neat, ive never seen a engine in a remote control car before", he asked a bunch of questions about the nitro engines and he said that he liked tinkering with motors. A few months later i was at a  park getting ready to drive my firestom and i saw that same guy with a tmaxx. i said "how do you like the hobby so far?". he said "he saw the electrics as toys but he said the nitros feel like a hobby to me". i thought that it was pretty cool that my nitro got another person interested in the hobby.

Shabbernigdo

My first hobby grade RC was a nitro.Kyosho Inferno 10. Its was a PITAto get it tuned and running but then agian i had no prior experience and no one to help me. I was 16 at the time.

Dont have any nitros any more. just sold my revo but i do have my hpi baja and my cr-01.

Telecaster

My Feedback: (1)

I have an old Nitro Sport that has a 1 needle carb. Guy at the LHSlooked at me like I was made of peanuts when I told him that lol

That was my first r/c car. It came witha another one (used) and I had to rebuild both right away(gummed up). That was about a month ago. I sold one of the cars and kept the Nitro Sport. Easy to work on but when there is a problem it does take a little formulated troubleshooting to nail down the problem. That's probably what frustrates people the most, the troubleshooting and not the actual work involved. If you don't troubleshoot systematically then any problem has the potential to be a nightmare.

schuttman

Here is a trip in the way back machine LOL. Way Way Wayback in the early 70's when Mr Peabody and myself, could not afford or did not know about true remote cars, were testing
theWenmac and Testors control line cars, Just go do a search on these cars and the Wenmac cars for sure, because I still have a Wenmac 57 chevy.
This was when you got a carthat ran on a string linewith a .049 engine,ya a circle or a straight line. Engine, no pipe, no air cleaner, no clutch, sit it downand let go..........
Oh ya it only had one (1) screw on the engine.
Istill have that 57 chevyand it is better than allof the tru remotes I havetoday, man nothing was better than smelling that cox fuel burning back in the day....
So in closing all of you elect guys that bash NITRO you can ki$$ my @$$ because if it was not for these companies you would besitting around playing playstation
or twiting or facebooking........... Peaceout..........

1320Fastback

When did glow engines become nitro engines?




Just messing

Haddi Taha

i dont have nitro yet but i certainly don't bash nitro but i do give pros amd cons of nitro and electric to newbs.

Argess

Mr Peabody and the Way-Back machine.....LOL. Brings back memories. I see this is going the nitro/vs electric route, which is unfortunate. It could easily be a glow-engine vs gas engine debate as well. I'm firmly convinced a lot of the Baja guys didn't like, or couldn't hack glow-engines, so they switched.

Notice I was using the term glow-engine. That's really the correct name as far as I know. The term nitro engine came along as fuels containing nitro fuels became more common. Someone must have come up with "nitro engine" as a nic, and it sounds cool, so it stuck.

I like model engines. The only reason I picked cars/trucks/buggies is because I'm a really bad pilot and spent way too much time repairing airplanes.....and sometimes they wern't even repairable.

So for me it's all about the engine, and whether other power plants have better performance or not, I like tinkering with engines.

It's not that hard to deal with a glow-engine....oops....OK....nitro-engine, but they frequently need tuning tweaks, and sometimes other things go wrong, and as simple or not to fix whatever the enigine needs, it's fun for me, and satisfying when I get it working the way I want it to.

378

My Feedback: (4)

Here here!

My first engine was a CEN NT-16. It took me three months to get it started for the first time, due mainly to the manual never actually saying to lean it slightly if the factory settings are so blubbery rich the damn thing won't start with a huge helping of only trying once or twice a month. lol noob mistake. I eventually got it started and got two gallons out of it. Not bad, really, considering it was A: My first nitro, B: I beat the snot out of it and C: It wasn't really that well built an engine in the first place. It eventually snapped the crank between drive washer and flywheel. So instead of spending 35 on a new crank and 65 on a new piston/sleeve, as they were worn out too, I just bought an OS .18 CV-RX.

I still run that CV-RX, now in my NTC3 since the truck I bought it for is retired, and I love it. It takes the best qualities of an LS9 V8, sprinkles them with legendary Japanese reliability, and shrinks them into a tiny little package suitable for RC use. Instant burnouts, very low idle, starts easily, doesn't foul up the one-way in the pull start, glow plugs last forever (I initially used the plug from the NT16, which already had about a gallon on it, for break in and about another half gallon), and I only adjust the carb twice a year to compensate for seasonal temperature swings. I wish my mom's van was that reliable!


Would I buy an electric? Sure. It's kinda hard to run nitro indoors, and the helicopter I want to buy is a tiny little electric indoor mode. Also, I want one of those Tamiya or HPI front-drive cars, just for novelty's sake, and those are electric. And those badass Tamiya semi trucks. They're electric only. But I default to nitro because it's just what I prefer. I got into hobby-grade stuff to get away from spending more time at the charger than I do doing donuts, so I'm not going to go back to that if I have a choice. My primary cars, the ones I drive most often, will be pull start nitros. They're simple, plug-and-play, and they give me an hour or so of fun each session.

If that means I sacrifice performance then so be it. It's not like I have a shortage of power anyways, the CV-RX throws my TC3 into a four wheel drift at anything above half throttle. Admittedly it does give me a HUGE grin when it starts into one of those drifts, and I'm running rally tires that aren't known for on-road grip, so I'm not complaining.

AFAIK the reason we don't use gasoline is that gasoline just won't make enough power. The fuel we use has way more energy per unit than gasoline does. Not only that but we'd need a computerized ignition system if we want any revs. 60ΒΊ of timing advance, necessary for the types of redlines we're accustomed to, just will not run properly at idle.

pmerritt

My Feedback: (118)

You just can't beat the power that a glow engine makes. Isee these pilots come to the field with their P-51s, AT-6s, Cubs with those electric engines and it's about like being at a 9 volt batterychain saw tree cutting contest. To see and hear a glow engine powering around an aircraft is 50% of the excitement of this hobby. For me the "post flight" is as much a part of my day at the field as is the "pre-flight".

Taking the time to clean wings, fuselage, wheel pants, and tail feathers gives me that added opportunity to look over rods, horns, hinges and monokote. Not to mention the inner feeling of knowing that I have successfully (and sometimes NOT successfully) completed an amazing task of defying gravity and personally controlling an internal combustion aircraft from fueling to de-fueling.

Flying is flying but the additional responsibility of mastering the combustion engine for that event enhances ones ego. If it were as easy as plugging in a battery, unplugging at battery, throwing a foam device into ones trunk, Ithink I would take up bingo or underwater basket weaving.

Gooseman240

[sm=thumbup.gif][sm=thumbup.gif] 's up!!!

Great thread, right on the money, and this is where half the excitement is.

Come on, who does not get their hairs standing on the back of their neck when you hear a nice 4 stroke idle before flight, or a big WWII bird at an airshow.

Electrics I feel are a little more complicated, and more stuff can go wrong than with a glow. Besides, replacement parts cost a lot more for electrics, although still getting better by the year.

revo_sbs

My Feedback: (23)

I have been a nitro guy for a long time. I then got into brushless with minis. I thought that brushless was great for the minis because they were small and the brushless motors and batteries put out great power.

I now own a Losi 8ight-t that is nitro with an OS .28xz. I love it. I always will. Nitro is just my thing: I love the smell of burning nitro fuel and the sound of a nitro engine. Tuning the engine is enjoyable and gives a reward when done right.

I just got an 8ight-te in a trade. I am really looking foreward to driving it to compare it to my nitro 8ight-t. It should be fun!!!!

Yes nitro is not as complicated as some people make it out to be. There is always that engine that is really difficult to tune, but those experiences make us learn.

HerrSavage

Excellent first post cummins. It just isn't that hard. And that elo-fans argue that it is is just overstated and lame, mostly the whining of kids with ADD too lazy and incompetent to figure it out. Not that it's hard to "figure it out"....

I detest elo, being honest, but I also think the reverse is true of elo - it's not as "plug-and-play" as some people try to say it is either...

johndavis

i enjoy both nitro and electric. both have their ups and downs. yes i had a hard time when i started but knowledge came with time and not giving up. i made the normal mistakes but when i made one i learned from it and figured out how to fix it. and to me its the fun of racing if someone thinks you buy a rc car and just run it and never breaks are going to be very dissipointed. this applys to both electric and nitro. i like working on my rc cars it relaxes me.

res3567

Ireceived a Cox interceptor back in Christmas'78, and talkin bout a "toy"! Crappy weaksteering, no differential, and a big ole' steeringbox andwheel for the Tx. and a combo Rx. and steering servo box which Cox claimed to have the range of two football fields. I was 11. The car did not survive the winter of '79Now I am packing two Tamiya electric cars, andTHREE nitro boats. The smell....the sound....I STILL LOVE IT!!!!!!!