ORIGINAL: speaker monkey
Hey All,
Im new to this forum and to the world of remote control, please be kind. I am really interested in making my own remote control boat that uses a diesel engine. I tried to do a bit of research before I posted and generally all I could find was talk about old real diesel boats or replicating diesel boat sounds. It certainly doesn't seem to be the done thing. I can already hear the responses to why I shouldn't persue this route: expensive (the cheapest engine I could find was still over £100) + fuel, difficult, smelly, dirty, polluting, less torque options, dangerous, unrelaiable & unnecessary, However these reasons are yet to deter me (some even do the opposite). I'm a speaker builder by trade so I am no stranger to the careful, fiddly & hands on design and I used to build non-RC models when I was a kid. Plus I relish a challenge and the design and build is where I will get my kick. Building an off the shelf kit has no attraction to me although I am sure it will give me a good grounding with what its all about.
''A speaker builder?'' you say ''surely you would be more at home trying an ellectrically powered one?'' True, however I always feel that the world of electronics is a bit impersonal and I prefer getting my hands dirty in other ways.
Aaanyway, what I am really asking is for some direction / advice / links / discussion on where I can get started with this, as I said before there seems to be a bit of a dearth of info on this subject.
All the best
monkey
Welcome to the forum! You have an ambitious idea there, and I admire that. Do you have an idea of what size boat you want to end up with? Kit build or Scratch build? Hull shape? Water propped or Air propped airboat?
From the diesel engine standpoint... don't expect a realistic diesel sound that you're accustomed to in semi trucks and fullsize pickup trucks. Model diesel engines are mostly all single cylinder (there are multicylinder radials too) and built for airplanes. I haven't seen any recently that allowed for water cooling although one may not need it if air cooling is sufficient. If you want to get to know the model diesel engine, you should check out the diesel airplane engine forum and do some reading. You may find the Diesel option to not work as well as you'd like in a marine application. Thats just my thought though..
[link=http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/forumid_87/tt.htm]Diesel engine forum[/link]
These engines use no glow plugs, but they require special model diesel fuel. The fuel is more expensive than glow fuel if you buy it premixed. You can make it yourself, but you need to be able to get liquid ether to make it.
Hope this helps.
Tim