My main winter project (a 1/4 Scale Chipmunk) has been held up for the past 5 weeks waiting on a speical order part (the LHS has told me it will come in this week!).

This little break has allowed me to get some other work done. Over the past couple of years I have obtained several motors that were old and not in good shape, in fact one friend gave me two .25 size motors (one OS and one Magnum) to use for Static Display and another OS. 30 was given to me by the widow of a club member, I also purchased a 12 year old Magnum .45 as part of a whole package of stuff purchased from a guy getting out of the hobby. In every case the motor was a throw in with a bunch of other stuff.

Well my break has given me time to work on these motor. The Magnum 45 looked to be in the best shape, it was mounted in a trainer and appeared to have been run in the last 5 years. After a bit of work and tuning I got that motor running like new - one down.

The three smaller motors presented more of a problem. Two were virtually seased up, rotating the prop was difficult at best, the OS .30 looked the best, but it too was difficult to turn, and there were missing parts.

I took the mufflers off each motor, and dropped a few drops of air tool oil into it, then slowly tried to turn the prop. To my surprise, after a bit of work, the props started to move easily and the engines had good compression. After getting the engines to turn, I took to cleaning them up a bit. Working with WD-40 and a toothbrush, I cleaned up the three motors, and then mounted two of the three.

Yesterday I set the OS 30 on my test bench, reset the mixture to factory settings, and tried to start it. The motor literally started on the first turn, no problems at all. A bit of tuning and that little .30 was tunning as good as you could believe. The Magnum .25 was the one in the worst shape, very rusted up, by after the cleaning and care, it was looking OK, and I figured I would give it a shot. First turn again the motor jumped to life, it needed more tuning that the OS, but I ended up running a full tank of gas through it with out many problems once it was dialed in.

I am not getting the little OS 25 ready - I would have already run it, but I am missing a small part I need to pick up this week. Given it was the motor in the best shape of the three I am not expecting any problems getting it going.

So today I have the following collection of running motors:

OS .91 4 Stroke (New in Box) - no plane for it yet, but I have a Norseman on floats I am building that it would fit well into
OS .61 AS - No plane for it either, but I am thinking a 4* 60 will be my next project and that will go into it.
OS .46 FX - Sitting in my trainer right now - might be moved to a .40 Corsair if I get the guts to try to fly it.
OS .30 Max - No plane, but I might use it for a .40 size Cub (It should fly pretty scale with that motor)
OS .25 Max - No Plane this is the only one I have not yet tried to run.
OS .25 LA - Sitting in a nice little SIG MK II trainer - I think my son will fly this plane.
Magnum .45 - Sitting in another trainer that I purchased from a guy - this is my backup plane for the season
Magnum .25 - No plane, just got this one running, it is still attached to my test bench.

I think I will be getting my special part next week, so I will be back to building, but I have got a ton of experience with motors over the past couple of weeks and feel much better about my mechanical skills!