This is the third different thread that I have read concerning front bearing failure on the Tower .75 engine. It makes me wonder if the company that Tower has manufacturing engines for them are using cheap bearings that aren't up to ABEC standards. For what Tower is charging for these engines they have to cut costs somehow! I am still going to take my chances and order an Tower hobbies .75 for a scratchbuilt F15 Eagle pusher prop jet that I am building.

As a side note, I once paid over $300.00 for an MVVS .77 rear exhaust engine equipped with a tuned pipe for a Great planes F4 Phantom and I was totally disappointed in the performance of the engine and Morris hobbies who is the distributor of MVVS and is who I bought the engine from. I had nothing but problems with this engine and never got it to run properly. After burning out numerous glow plugs and having problems getting peak performance out of this supposed powerhouse .77 I removed the rear plate and was horrified to find huge pieces of molding slag and flash (pieces of metal that are hanging off of the rough edges of moldings and castings) rattling around in the crankcase and occasionally making there way through the intake port and into the combustion chamber where they would cause the glow plug to fry and fail! I called the owner of morris hobbies and was rudely told that I would have to "make it quick" because he was at a flying meet and was answering his cell phone! He casually explained to me that there must have been "small shavings from the drilling and tapping process to custom fit the tuned pipe header". WHAT A BUNCH OF CRAP! I wasn't born yesterday and I know molding flash and slag when I see it! He refused to fix the engine and wouldn't even authorize paying the shipping to have the engine repaired and only got ruder as our conversation went on! The engine was trash and I was so pissed off at the whole ordeal that I ended up selling the beautiful F4 phantom that I had taken almost a year top build in the colors of the Blue Angels, of course I did the right thing and sold it for a good price and informed the buyer of what had happened with the engine and my bad experience with Morris hobbies!

Other people I have flown with have had great success with their MVVS engines and swear by them for performance, so it just goes to show that it all depends on whether or not you get the luck of the draw when a company pulls an engine off of the shelf and ships it to you!

I have had nothing but good experiences with Tower hobbies customer service and I will gladly take a chance on buying their .75 knowing that if anything goes wrong I have the best hobby shop in the world to stand behind their products!