As far as 4-strokes go, I'd have to say that YS is the cream of the crop, but the are also on the pricy side. I find Saito to be quite to my liking and a little more affordable than the YS. Like anything out there, there will be people that trash-talk a certain brand based on their bad experience with it. Case in point, I went to our clubs tailgate swap-n-shop at our airfield. I set up my stuff and then took a walk around to what was there. I found a fellow club member that was selling all his 4-stroke stuff because "they just weren't reliable, I'm switching all my planes over to 2-strokes". Anyway, I picked up 3 Saito 1.50's and 1 Saito 1.20 and a whole box of spare parts like valve springs, bearings, mufflers, etc. for the grand sum of $25.

I took them all home and strapped them to a test stand one by one and fired them up..... they all ran like crap!!! I began giving each one a tune-up and found that 3 of them had 1/16" or more slop in 1 or both of the rockers. One of the engines had a broken valve spring. Resetting the valve lash and replacing the broken spring (with on in the spare parts box) had all 4 of them running like a top. The 1.50's were spinning a 16x8 at 9800 rpm and the 1.20 was spinning a 15x8 at 9700 rpm.

So, even though this long time user of Saitos declared them junk, all they took was a little tune-up to be strong, reliable runners. I disassembled them, cleaned them up like brand new by boiling them in anti-freeze and reassembled. I took one of the brand new looking 1.50s back to the next swap-n-shop and sold it for $75. The guy was hesitant to buy it and kept asking me "what's wrong with it? why only $75". After cleaning one of the 1.50's, I noticed the cylinder is cracked right where the intake screws in so I had to relegate the rest of it for spare parts. Anyway, I'm ramblings now...... I like YS and Saito, in that order.