Dean in Milwaukee

Considering doing a 90 sized plane, but would love to do a weed whipper conversion instead of running a glow motor. The problem is weight, or too much of it. I don't need a huge amount of power, but it does need to balance. This is for a 1/5th scale cub.

Please limit answers to engines that can still be had from a store somewhere. I've had zero luck with finding stuff like this at garage sales. [&o]

Here's the plane, only $179 sugg. retail!: http://www.theworldmodels.com/para/p...?airplaneid=92

Thanks,
Dean in Milwaukee

blackbaron

My Feedback: (92)

You can get a small echo trimmer, the 21.3 cc model and get a CH ignition system. This is exactly what the FPE 1.3 ci engine is. The FPE 1.3 sells for $440.00 and you can do the echo conversion and have the same thing for about $300.00 if you buy everything new. If you want to get off cheaper find an 18cc or 21cc weedeater featherlight and save about $75.00. It wouldn't have as much power as the Echo, but pretty close. It would work fine on a cub.

Dean in Milwaukee

Thank you!

ZAGNUT

My Feedback: (1)

the little kawasaki 20+cc engines will come out far lighter than the echo 21.2. these are normally found on hedge trimmers and because the blades usually break from abuse the power heads can be found in shops for cheap.

i also suspect that these will make quite a bit more power than the little echo but have yet to run the couple that i have.


dave

captinjohn

zagnut: Can you post a photo of the Kawasaki you have? Thanks Capt,n

aero nut

Hi dean! try the weed eater ligth weed trimmer with the 25 cc engine and convert it to glo head with an glo adapter, use 1:1 regular gasoline with E85 fuel (Check your local listnings for fuel dispenser) www.E85fuel.com this combination works very good as a glo fuel alternative,once you have your fuels mixed then use a mix of 40 or 50:1 ratio of a good synthetic oil and vuala you have a real ligth gasoline/glo operated engine use an O.S. 4stroke glo plug, and if you want a little more kick to the fuel you can add nitro if available at a 5% ratio, this will help the low idle transition to be much better, the only thing to do to the carb is to make the venturi diameter a little bigger (0.400 inch) to let more air go to the combustiobn chamber and thus letting you mix more fuel for more RPM'S.
BTW E85 fuel is $1.95 here in San Diego I have heard to be as cheap as $1.18 a galon so it is not a bad alternative fuel to use, as a matter of fact the reason I mix it with regular gasoline is to make the synthetic oil more soluble so I wont have to use castor oil wich is very soluble in E85 but more expensive, if you can get ahold of Klotz thecniplate oil you woulnd't have to make this mixture of fuels just mix it at a 40 or 50:1 ratio as a regular gas engine woud use it.
Well have fun and enjoy, and if you go this route please let me know your results.
Engine Weed eater 25 CC
Propeller APC 15x8
Glo Plug O.S. 4Stroke F plug
Fuel 50% regular gas + 50% E85 fuel mixed in a 50:1 ratio with amsoil and 5% nitro (klotz)
RPMS 8200
Wheigth of engine 1lb. 12 oz. (without magneto ignition)
Plane Hobby People's Exite 90

captinjohn

aeronut...what whould happen if you use say 60 or 70% E85 fuel. Would you still need the nitro for better throttle response? Thanks John

aero nut

Yesterday I tried E85 95% With 5% nitro and then added 2% amsoil It did work well but the disolving of the oil wasn't good enough so I had to add some regular gasoline to improve the oil mixing I added aproximately 30% gasoline and it ran beautiful, I havent tried that combination your'e asking but I will try it later I asume It should work good enough for our intentions.
give it a try and see what you think about it.
Also if you want to use the E85 by it self you would have to use castor or Klotz oil which will dissolve very good on this type of fuel

captinjohn

Aero nut: I have 5 + quarts of Klotz oil...Part no KL300. Seems like it should work. I do not know if I can get E85 here in west Mich. I have to do some calling I guess. Or look it up on puter somehow? Keep the good research going. We may have to start a new "thread" called..GLOW-ALINE ENGINES. It would be nice to have data all in on forum. Thanks Capt,n

aero nut

Hey captinjhon! you may try to look for an E85 source by typing www.e85fuel.com then go to the refueling stations bar on you left it should give a list of all the retailers on your state, let me know your results, by the way I went flying this last weekend on my fairly new conversion of an echo 25 weed wacker engine without the ignition and converted to glo the engine weighted at 1lb 12oz and can probably bring the weight down some more, I flew it on a Hobby people's Exite 90 ARF
with the 60/35/5 gas/E85/nitro and got 8000 rpm's and was flying that plane on a 16 oz fuel tank for periods of 25-30 min on a single tank, so that are good numbers that I can be content with. Ill keep trying different combinations of fuel and maybe some modifications on the engine itself to bring those rpm's even higher, Oh! and I was forgetting one important
thing the LOW IDLE was perfect whit good trnasition from low to high speed.

aero nut

Captin! I found these address for you that sell E85 fuel

R & N Fasttrack
24344 Ecorse
Taylor , MI 48180
313-295-1693
View Map

Don’s Windmill Truck Stop
7262 Lansing Road
Dimondale , MI 48821
517-646-0717
View Map

B. P. Amoco
3841 South Rochester Rd.
Rochester Hills , MI 48307
248-852-5692

Hope they come on handy.
Bill pomplun

bdtsr

My Feedback: (5)

Shame NJ doesn't have an E85. I'd trade my Jeep in for an Explorer or other compatible vehicle. Rather pay a farmer for his alcohol than the money grubbing oil companies and their middle eastern partners! I like the idea of the E85 powered gasser engines in planes. Cheap fuel and no ignition system, how can you go wrong?!

bdtsr

My Feedback: (5)

I downloaded a list of E85 wholesale distributors. I can email it to anyone who wants it.

ramrod25

This is VERY interesting - AeroNut can you help with some other questions???

Edit: I found a place for the glo-head adapter - http://prophub.tripod.com/

I was going to convert my Homelights to use a CH ignition - but this sounds more interesting and will save a lot of weight.

I have a Spitfire I was going to put a Magnum 120 in, but if I could get the weight of the 25cc Homelite down to 28 oz - that would be awesome and the fuel would be much less expensive. I too have a Cub and I'd like to put the 18cc Featherlite in.

Edit: Thought of another question. Is there any storage problem with E-85; does it (what's the right word) deteriorate; if stored in a 2 gallon plastic container should it be used up within, say six months?

Second Edit: AeroNut - instead of this E85 fuel - can we mix Methanol with gasoline, nito and oil and make it work??

Would this mixture work?? (All measurments in fluid oz.) 128 oz = 1 gal

102 ounces of gasoline + 26 ounces of methanol (Approx 20%) + 2.5 ounces of amsoil (50:1) + 6.5 oz Nitro (5%).

I can get methanol locally for $2.50/gallon - closest place for E85 is Oklahoma City (4 hours away) -

Also - any issues with the carburator, other than boring out the venturi to about .400 ?

Edit 3: Apparently Nitro is going to be a little expensive to get - so before I spend a bunch of $ what do you think about mixing
gasoline with oil and then using a 30% nitro helicopter fuel instead of the methanol and nitro.

So I would have: 102 ounces of gasoline + 26 ounces of 30% nitro fuel + 2.5 ounces of amsoil.

If that mixture works out, then I can order 5 gallons of nitro over the internet. I think that will run about $175.00 or $35/gallon.

Thanks for the help. If this will work, I'm going to order two glo-plug adapters and get my engines converted.

aero nut

ramrod25, There doesn't seem to be any problem with the storage, I've mixe 2 gallons of this combo(gasoline/E85) and still flying the same mix with no problem in a period of one month, and as time goes by I am liking my set up more and more every time I go to the flying field, some of the guys that I fly with can't beleive it that my engine is running on glow plug and gasoline, some of the wacker engine users that dont have the plug adapter are using my gas with their regular flywheel/magneto ignition because they get more power on their engines with this fuel.
On your second question the answer is YES!!! Just make sure that the methanol is fresh and not contaminated; as a matter of fact that's how I started all using methanol and gasoline, the reason I've stoped using methanol is because methanol is 4.95 a gallon here whereas E85 is 1.95 a gal. but yes try it at a 20% mixture with regular gas and you don't necesarilly have to add some nitro to make it work It ill work fine with methanol/gasoline/ and 2% amsoil or any good quality synthetic 2 stroke oil like Mobil's MX2T racing oil, but if you want you can also try VP castor racing oil (motorcycle shop) and use the same of 40:1 or 50:1 ratio.
As far as your third question, helicopter fuel already has castor oil I think is about 20% castor oil if you dilute it at a 1 to ten ratio( that means lets say 1 ounce of heli fuel per 9 oz of gasoline/methanol mix I think you would have a close mixing proportion keeping in mind that with castor I don't know exactly what oil ratio to use maybe a 35:1 ratio wil work so probably 1 oz of Amsoil will sufice, just my guess, if anyboby wants to suggest on this one I will welcome your comments.
I hope that his answers your questions, try it and see wath results you get and keep us posted.
Happy flyng and landings.
AERO NUT

Volture

My Feedback: (1)

My Featherlite 25 conversion weighs 3 lbs without muffler. Small exhaust ports limit breathing, though. Do an RCU search on Featherlite to see my port photos.

ramrod25

AeroNut - thanks for the reply and information. I'm going to order the glo-plug adapters today and am going to pick up some methanol this afternoon. Hopefully, by next week, I'll have all the components together and be able to give this a try.

I'm going to put my 25cc engine on a test stand and run some before and after rpm testsl. I want to get a bench mark on it before I start changing fuel and intake ports. Am also going to look at some of the information on the exhaust ports and how to open them up.

Do you have any fuel consumption data for the 25cc homelite??

I figure (using my local costs) about 4.45/gallon for the fuel. 5% Nitro Mix

6.5 oz Nitro = $2.28
24 oz Methanol = .38
95 oz Gasoline = 1.48
2.5 oz Amsol = .31

As soon as I run the engine - probably this weekend, then I'm going to start cutting off the coil and cleaning up the excess metal. If I can get the weight of the engine down to the 30-32 ounce range - It will make a great engine for the Spitfire.

Thanks for your help

jpr72c

My Feedback: (1)

Can someone help me out. I have a featherlite fl1500 blower 25cc and want to convert to glow, but I dont have any friends in the "business". The local machine shops want more to cut my flywheel down than I paid for the engine new. I made my own prop hub but need to cut the flywheel down and use it as a spacer.
thanks,
jpr72c

ramrod25

JPR72C - try these to sites:

http://www.carrprecision.com/Pages/prod02.htm

http://prophub.tripod.com/ This quy also has the glow plug adaptors.

If none of that works out - let us know and we'll help out.

You might post a new thread in the Engines Conversion section - there are quite a few quys that are experts on all these types of problems -but they might not see your questions at the end of this thread.

Where in Albania are you??? Address just says KS, -

tomyrcmodels

befor I have the old 40CC conversion engine ,I think this is the lightest engine I got .but now ,I have the new one ,even more light ,only 3.17LB.

tomyrcmodels

befor I have the old 40CC conversion engine ,I think this is the lightest engine I got .but now ,I have the new one ,even more light ,only 3.17LB.

tomyrcmodels

befor I have the old 40CC conversion engine ,I think this is the lightest engine I got .but now ,I have the new one ,even more light ,only 3.17LB.

mikenlapaz

jpr72c
It you trust your prop hub to be true, this should workd for you. It has for me.
The cut0ff wheel are ablative and do not load up with metal. 4" are best if available.
(edit: Misread your objective, thought you just needed to shorten the fins not reduce the diameter to make a spacer/ hub.)

bn120

My Feedback: (1)

tomyrcmodels what engine is that? oooohhh tell us more dont just leave us hangin

Darin

tomyrcmodels

this is the SPE40Z gas engine from Melody RC Models . thrust about 21lb , prop are 18-10 to 21-6 . this engine are designe for replace the ZENOAH G26 or G38 . even G45. if your plane are able to put the Zenoah G26 , and you want more power and less weigh , just put this engine on and fly .