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Old 04-07-2006 | 10:51 AM
  #20  
Al Stein
 
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,048
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From: Johnstown, PA
Default RE: Only one needle on OS .25?

Xray -- you hit the important point... that the engine starts well and transitions well. That's what an FP is made for.

When someone talks about things like enlarging the air bleed, that's to trade a little reliability for a little added performance... which is to say it's trading what this engine was designed for to get some of what some other engine was designed for. That kind of trade-off is for engine designers -- the other posters may be engine designers, but I'm not. I buy engines that are designed by someone else to do what I want them to. And the engine you have is a top-notch example of being able to do that -- without anyone changing it.

I have at least one or two copies of most sizes of OS FP engines because I can grab any one of them, bolt in into an airplane, and go fly without messing with carb settings. Does that give me max performance? Well, if you measure performance in terms of power alone it doesn't... but I measure performance partly in terms of being able to focus on flying and safely forget about engine adjustment. Measured that way, my engines' performance is unbeatable -- and so is yours, even just the way it looks in the photo. I repeatedly go a whole season without once needing to adjust a needle on those engines and that's why I paid the prices I did (more than any similar engine) when they were new.

I'd leave the thing just the way it is unless something about how it runs tells you that it needs to be changed.
Most of the guys at the field don't believe that a plane can fly without the carb setting being changed each time, but with a good engine that is just not true.