All of the Norvels I have flown were pre-RevLite. By the time the RevLite came along I had moved to VAs.

We had some trouble with the nickel peeling off the cylinder walls. It did not happen with every engine. We were running little glass props and 5X3 black Cox props cut to 4&1/4, so they were turning up pretty well. Whether or not the problem would have occurred at 25,000 I don't know. Maybe not.

Speculation was that the problem was possibily related to not cleaning and properly preparing the cylinder prior to plating it. Both the cylinder and piston were usually ruined when the problem occurred.

Never-the-less, I regarded them as pretty neat engines, especially considering the low cost and we had a ton of fun with them.

So, I would not particularly worry about the AP being like the pre-RevLite Norvel, if the quality is equal to the Norvel.