I just picked up my new Razor 3D ARF, when I first looked it over at the hobby shop through the plastic bags I thought it looked great. I could not wait to get home to get it all out and begin to put this wonderful looking plane together.

As I began laying everything out and looking everything over a different picture began to develop.
First I noticed that the firewall is slanted to one side, further observation showed that the blind nuts for the engine mounts were not in the center of the firewall but off to one side. I began to look over the fuse even more and noticed a gap in the top portion of the firewall, cracked ply in one of the formers and two cracks in the bottom deck just behind the firewall.
To top it all off the fuse had a fair bit of hanger rash and several low spots where it looks like someone sanded way to much before covering. There are plenty of dings and dents all over the fuse.

I also did not see a QC label on the inside of the fuse like the wing and other parts have, but did find a bunch of scribble from a pen as if to mark it or such.

I will be calling lanier in the morning....Will update the thread.

Here are some pics.



Dbow

You slant the firewall to get right thrust. Then, you must move the enging mount to the left of the firewall to get the thrust washer of the engine at the center of the fuselage. Your other complaints may be of concern.

Roger Hill

Hmm o.k so you are saying that everything looks to be in order as far as the firewall?

I have had 2 other ARF's and one kit, none of them had the slant and the offset so I just assumed this ARF had some issues.
If that is true then there is just the issue of the cracks in the lower deck and the former.

Any other opinions?


Dbow

Keep us up to date.

The firewall should be slanted...

Its probably slanted slightly right and slightly down. This helps to compensate for the torque of the motor and deliver right/down thrust. By placing the engine that way, you won't have to artificially have your rudder control surface with a constant left turn in it and your elevator with a constant down in it. The result will be more equal control surface throw.

The more slant, the more the designers probably figured your going to overpower the plane.

As far as slightly cracked firewall formers, some questionable sanding, some slightly loose covering...I've never seen an ARF that didn't have at least one of those issues. Hell, even when I build a model its going to have at least one of those imperfections. And if it doesn't, it will after the first trip to the field...if nothing else but minor hanger damage. Now, if the covering has puncture marks...I would say that goes into the unacceptable range.

For all what you said, I would rate this ARF a "C"....there are worse, there are better....

I would probably just epoxy the firewall cracks if they weren't too bad and there was only one....but you didn't include pictures of that.

Yep! Some of the ARFS are going to thrust built into the firewall. I would be worried about that gap and the cracking. If I were building a plane for someone I wouldnt let it leave my shop with a crack or a gap in it. As far as the sanding goes, blame it on the chinese )

I just finished the Global Fokker DVII ARF about a month ago...one firewall former was cracked and sheered all the way through over the bottom wing. Everything else was great. I epoxied it and moved on. You have to find out what your willing to accept.

The quality for these ARFS are all over the map from what I've seen. You get what you can accept and complain and return what you cannot.

I would fix one firewall former...but more than one, I probably would complain about. But the crack was obviously formed when they yanked it too hard out of the die cut...which I've done myself.

o.k I put the mounts on and I see what all of you are saying about the angle and the offset of the firewall. So I guess I will just have to beef up the cracks with a little epoxy and be done with it.

I think I will go back to the hobby shop with this plane and get some advice because my engine wont fit correctly with the mounts. The mounts are not wide enough for the OS .46fx to fit into unless I tighten one side of the mount down and then place the engine in and tighten down the other side. One mount ends up out of line and is not paralle with the other. I am unsure if I am doing something wrong though.
Im actually not going to use the .46 but rather a .50SX in this plane. The .46 is what I have laying around I wanted to see how it would fit.


So far I am not please with this ARF but I will wait until it gets in the air before I make a final conclusion.

Thanks for the info

Dbow

Gosh, that could be too late...[X(]

Well Like I said I am going to take the plane back to the hobby shop and get the advice from the owner. He has something like 20 years with planes and is a fair guy.

Im sure he will steer me in the right direction.

As for the cracks, they are in the pictures, looks almost like a tear on each side right near where the landing gear mounts.

The former I was talking about is not all the way through, it also looks like a sliver of wood was torn off. At first look it appears to be a crack but after what was said earlier about being yanked off the die cut or whatever I looked closer and its not all the way through. Just looks like a piece was ripped off then glued back in.

Dbow

Bubba (the main man of Lanier) usually comes to the Andersonville fly in. You should come to the fly in and ask him about it infront of a few people.

Did you call Bubba? I'd call before you confront him in public. There is no sense in "calling him out", until you at least ask him to take care of it in private.

I do not know him personally, but I have never heard anything negative about how he runs his business.

Sounds like you might have some history with this guy, but no I would not do that.

I am planning to take it back to the hobby shop but I will call him today at some point and see what he says.


Dbow

I've had six Lanier Razors. Sold 1, kept 2, other 3 are still for sale right here in RCU Classifieds. To me they look about as good as anything else I've seen. No... they're not perfect. If they were, you couldn't afford 'em

In the grand scheme of things, they are built a lot better than many kit builds I've seen. And value? Consider the elevator bellcrank that you don't get in the likes of the U-Can-Do or Katana. Central Hobbies sells a similar item for $35. The glass work is beautiful and flawless. Control surfaces are double-beveled... no need to modify for extreme throws. Covering is UltraCote... not the China-cote imitation.

Sorry for the vent. I guess I'm just tired of seeing this ARF bashed undeservedly. Guys... it ain't that bad! In fact... if it was, I certainly wouldn't be keeping two.

I'm in the process of putting a Razor together and have found it to be a nicely thought out and well built ARF. Covering was great right out of the box and the parts fit is excellent. As the instruction book recommends, I reinforced the high stress areas, such as the firewall, landing gear and wing bolt blocks, with epoxy. One thing manufacturers should quit doing is pre-drilling the firewall for the motor mount and installing blind nuts. There is such a wide variety of different make and displacement engines that will be installed in any given airframe that this feature most often is useless. Had to re-do mine for a RCV-58CD four stroke. Will use JR 811's on all surface with HS-81 on the throttle. 1200ma NIMH 6v Rx battery. It's turning out very nicely and I hope it flies as good as it looks.

I realize that ARF's are not always perfect, however I was not looking to do this much work on this plane at this time.
I am building it, the plane is getting closer to completion but like I said , I am having to put way more time into it than I had planned on.

So far I have had to do the following:

1) Had to remove and re-install the blind nuts because the OS .46FX would not fit into the mounts. The area between the engine mounts was way to small, I dont see how any engine could fit into that narrow of a space.

2) Lite ply supports for the bellcrank inside the fuse had to be re-glued. The lite ply on one side was not flush with the fuse side, it had a large ball of dried glue under it that would not allow it to sit flush. Bellcrank would not mount correctly, so I had to remove and re-glue. When I tried to remove, it tore some of the sidewall sheeting off.

3) Rear of fuse where Stab mounts, There was nothing back there but an open hole, nothing inside the fuse to glue to but the outer frame of the fuse. I built up the area by adding some balsa blocks to give the stab something to glue to. Also had to shape the opening as it did not match the stab.

4) The rudder servo mount blocks inside the fuse are glued in crooked and are not flush with the sidewall. That area had no additional support either, there are some balsa stringers but basically the blocks were glued to the sheeting. I built up the area with some balsa blocks and it appears to be ok now. I am unsure how I will remove the crooked block without tearing the side of the plane out. I may just have to leave it like that if the servo screws will bite into it.

5) Rear former just before the stab is crooked and not glued properly. It does have glue though and I dont see a way to fix it without tearing the plane up.

6) Landing gear ply (no block) has 2 cracks on each side, looks like it might have been torn. I will beef up with some epoxy and another piece of light ply.

7) Former under the wing where the tank goes is very flimsy, grain orientation is incorrect and wood appears very cheap.

Thats all so far, like I stated in previous post I do lack ARF building experience, I have built 2 and they were nothing like this.

Also, Im not bashing the company or the plane just stating my experience.


Dbow

I have just about completed the plane, still have to install the tank and mount the canopy and cowl.

I have found some more issues.

Bell Crank:

There is quite a bit of play in the bellcrank horn where it mounts to the shaft. I have it installed correctly and have the small set pin tight. It looks like I may have to drill all the way through the horn and shaft and install a screw straight through. Otherwise the elevator control surfaces won't return to center when they are moved. This bellcrank system is crap anyway, the plastic is junk and I think I may look for another system to replace it. In addition the bellcrank assembly bumps into the crooked rear former, the only way I see to remedy this is to dremel away a little of the former. If it had been built correctly it would not hit it.

I did also notice that the Hitec 605's are contributing to the problem. I have 605's on the rudder and the elevator, The 605 on the rudder will not center correctly all the time. Sometimes it just stops short of center, I checked the horns and such and made sure there was no play, no binding etc., the 605 still will not center correctly.
I did also notice the 605 on the elevator contributing to the bellcrank problem.
Looks like I may send these servos back if I dont set a match to this plane first.


Well I sure hope nobody else is having as many problems with this plane.


Dbow

I run a lot of Hitech servos and I have a bunch of the 605's on my 40 sized planes. I have never had a center problem with them. The 645MG is a different story though.

I had previously heard good things about the 605's , however after I was fine tuning them earlier tonight I did some reading here and found lots of issues. I found threads listing centering problems and failures.
The ones I have are coming out of the plane and going back, I will be replacing them with Futaba servos.

Dbow

Could you please add some more wood to your plane, that way you can complain about it flying bad too.

Just because you over build is no reason to complain that there is no reinforcement here, or nothing to glue to there.

A 3D plane is suppost to be as light as possible. Build it to fly, not to crash.

If you are responding pertaining to the opening in the rear for the stab, then I wonder if you have ever seen this plane.
There was nothing there to glue the stab to, nothing but the 2 sides of fuse. If you somehow managed to glue the stab to it, it would not hold very long. I don't know about you but I would rather have my elevator intact during flight. Without building it up the stab would certainly seperate from the fuse in a quick manuever. The opening by the way came nowhere near matching the stab. With the stab in the hole, I could look from one side and see clear through and look around the room through the hole.

The other thing you might be replying to is the rudder servo mounts. Same situation, I certainly would not mount a high torque servo onto 2 small blocks of balsa glued to sheeting. I do not think that needs explantion, quite obvious I think.

I do understand that the 3D stuff is suppose to be light, lighter is better and I have taken every opportunity to keep the weight down.
Right now without Muffler, wheels, cowl, and canopy its weighing just slightly over 4 lbs.

Keeping things light is no excuse for crappy assembly, this plane must have been built on Friday by the biggest stoner in the shop.

Dbow

I normally tell people to NOT build the plane like they sell it to you. But finally, this one sounds like you should. How refreshing!!! I would tell you to do all of these mods.

The sheeting for the turtle deck is rounded, which makes it very rigid and stronger than you need, the stab ties all of the skins together. How many tail sections do you have from crashes? I have a lot of them, they were the only thing to survive. Why? Because they are overbuilt. Extra tips: Use Hitec 225's for ailerons, HS 81 for throttle and 605's for ruder/elevator.

I built the 59" wingspan GP Cap at 4.37lbs, ready to fly with a heavy MDS 48. Not only was it built with all of the techniques that you have listed in this post, but the only ply was the firewall and landing gear plate, everything else was 6lb contest balsa. I joked when I fired up the engine the first time telling everyone that if they knew how it was built that they wouldn't want to be near it.

Ended up being a great flying plane!!! Lasted forever and took a lot of abuse.

I didn't know until I tried.

The gap in the horizonal stab is bad, scab in filler pieces. But other than that, build it like they sold it to you. Take lots of pictures. Then if it breaks in the air, call Bubba, and if you can not get any satisfaction from him, (I would be suprized) then post about how crappy this ARF is...

Thanks for the advice Darrinc.
I do hope the plane turns out to be a great flyer, especially since I have put so much time into it. It has been a frustrating build because I was not expecting to have to rebuild or do the extra work at this time on this plane.

I crashed a plane earilier this year and had nothing to fly. I do have a 4*60 kit on the table but it is not finished yet so I bought a GP big stick 40 ARF as a quicky to have something to fly until I got the 4* finished. Well I got bored with the stick (built in a few hours) and have not had the time to put into the 4* to finish it, I still need to buy covering and do a lot of final sanding. I have been so busy with work and such recently that I have not had the time to pay attention to the details of the kit.

I decided to buy another ARF that I could get into the air quickly but wanted something a lot more capable so I could get into 3D. I thought this Razor ARF would go together quickly and be in the air in no time. This has not been the case and has taken much longer than I planned, that is where the frustration has come from.

I dont know, maybe I should not have bought a plane that was just out for this occasion, but then I also think that my ARF just happend to be one of the ones that did not get the attention that most of the Lanier ARFS get.
I have read a lot of threads about ARFS and it seems like a mixed bag, some ARFS are great and some are not. Some seem to have to do a lot of work and on some of these planes and I guess that is to be expected in some cases.

I do intend to keep this thread updated and will post my views when I fly this plane, if it turns out to be an excellent flyer I will certainly be happy and let everyone know about it. It will make all the hard work worth it for sure.

You mention the Hitec 605 servos, I am sending my 605's back, they do not center correctly on the rudder or the elevators. I have read numerous threads about this problem with the 605's. In addition I have read about a lot of failures as pertaining to these servos going to full delfection in flight. I will say also that I have seen some threads with good experiences with these servos, but why take the chance?
I have not had time to decide on what to replace them with yet but will probably get Futaba servos. Maybe the Metal gear 3305's or the 3010's. I like the 3305 over the 3010 because the 3305 has the metal gear but has a slower speed.
Not sure at this point.


Dbow

Meant to add that I do have the Hitec 81MG for the throttle, but I am using Futaba standard BB on the ailerons. It is funny you mention the 225's because I was just looking at them yesterday.
I thought that they would be a bit small for the ailerons, but they do have the torque don't they. I will stick with the Futaba on the ailerons for now but I may pick up a couple of those 225's if I need to start shaving weight when the plane is final.

I am shooting for 4-1/2 lbs but still have to put on the muffler and the other things I mentioned earlier. I am also looking at the Tower Hobbies muffler for the OS .46FX or I may just remove the baffle from the OS muffler.

Dbow

Come on man!! We want a flight report