The snow has melted off my field and I was able to get my first flights of the year in yesterday. The first time up my heart was pounding out of my chest! I put together a new plane this winter and took the OS 46 out of my trusty trainer and put it in the new plane and bought a Thunder Tiger 45 for the trainer. I had only ran one tank threw it before flying it yesterday and boy did I have it rich!! With my OS It would have the trainer up in 30 to 40 feet. The Tiger took the whole length of the field and was a slow climb. I need to do some tuning on it today.

The Thunder Tiger is not a ringed engine so why are you running it so rich?? From working with engines and using my tach to see difference, with your rich setting I am guessing that you were only getting about 10.5 k rpm. No wonder it took the whole runway to get the plane off the ground! Get the engine adjusted properly and you will have lot sof power! [8D]

I don't have a tach so I started at the factory start point and leaned it 1/4 turn from there. Like I said I had only ran one tank threw it this winter just to loosen it up.

Running a new ABC (or ABN in the case of the TT) excessively rich during the break-in period can damage the engine, particularly during cold weather. New ABC/N motors should be run at full throttle, just at the lean side of the 2-4 break-point, for periods of 2-3 min, then shut down to cool & the process repeated until ~ 1/2 hr of run-time is achieved.

Breaking a motor in on the rich side will not damage a motor. Extra lubrication will cause lower temps resulting in a less than perfect fit between the cylinder and piston in the end of the break in process. This means you will have a motor with a little less power but not a damged motor. Breaking it in on the lean side will damage the motor and shorten it's useful life. This little motors are not much different than there 2 stroke big brothers which all require extra lubricatin during there break in. All you trying to do during break in is to get the motor to it's normal running temp. without a excessive load on it and making sure it's getting good lubrication.