ORIGINAL: Azcat59
Ed, I bought my first two ASP 108 Redheads from Indy RC way back when.....probably early 1990s. I ran the extra head shim and ran them on 10% fuel. With a Slimline Pitts muffler the engine would not richen up, even if you removed the high speed NV and held your finger over the hole. It was fine with the OS 61 size muffler, which added back pressure. And the OS carb made a well-behaved engine out of it. In more recent years, I bought a newer (Series 3) ASP 108 from Just Engines in England, and the carb was much different, and it has run fine. I also have two Magnum 90 two strokes, one the OS FSR copy, and the other the newer OS 90 copy, and both are user friendly engines. My Magnum 50 (52?) is a real honker too. I think the Chinese were doing ok with their engines, I have a GMS 47, and two Tower 75s and they are all well behaved. Too bad the Tower 75 in no longer imported, it was one of the finest buys out there.
Clair Sieverling
Hi, Clair. Yes, some of the very early .40 & .46 size ASP engines did have some carb problems. Mostly it was such things as flashing not being removed or o-rings either not installed, or being dried out. They were not perfect engines. I am not making that claim. But most were good engines, if you used the old Fox standard as a comparison.
The redhead was not intended to be ran over 9k rpm. It was not an OS clone, as I'm sure you know, but was a good engine on the average. Yes, the carbs on the .90 and 1.08 were way too large for good performance. The Chinese did make a few mistakes here and there.
If you wanted Chinese junk, all you had to do was to buy the earliest Tiger Shark engines. Some of those could not be make to run without the use of a machine shop. I understand that even they have been producing nice engines of late, although I have yet to buy one.
You know, if our economy worsens appreciably, the Chinese engines will most likely dry up, which would leave us engine less for the most part. It's all a plot to force us to go electric power!.
Ed Cregger