Glow and Gas
 

I saw a conversion kit for Gas to glow fuel. Dont Gas engines have more power. I know that without the ignition and flywheel weight would be lost. Glow engines run cooler too, so I could probly shave some of the cooling fins too. What do you guys think?

RE: Glow and Gas
 

Glow engines have more power, less weight, and run cooler.

Generally, gas engines are less tempermental with tuning and get better economy.

RE: Glow and Gas
 

What Im thinkin of doing than is to put the jug from my ryobi in a laythe and cut the cooling fins down till they are all round. More for apearance. Than convert it to glow.

RE: Glow and Gas
 

I run all my 30cc conversions on glow works great .

Darin

RE: Glow and Gas
 

You should be fine. The gas engines don't make more power than glow, they actually make a little less as glow fuel is more "powerful". The gas engines however, being usually 25cc and up are generally larger than the glow engines we all use, and thus offer more power due to their sheer displacement. They are also "torquey", and can swing considerably larger props than the glow engines we most often use. (A .60 size glow engine is 10cc)

Cutting down the fins should work fine, as you are right, an engine on glow fuel will run cooler. I have one gas engine converted to glow, and I have to let it run for a couple of minutes and rev it up to get it nice and warmed up to fly.

There is a long running and informative thread on running these engines on glow here in RCU if you would like to do a search. The only problem running glow, is that glow fuel has much more oil than these gas engines need. This might lead to carboning up, and will deposit oil on the aircraft to clean up. (Just like a normal glow installation.) You can work around this by mixing pure methanol with the glow fuel to reduce the effective oil content. Also, some R/C car fuels have a lower oil content to begin with which helps. The gasser engines need about 2 to 3% oil, while glow engine fuel for airplanes is usually from 17 to 22% oil.

Lastly, your carburetor may or may not flow enough glow fuel. An engine needs roughly double the amount of glow fuel to run as compared to gasoline. You can try it and see if it will run rich enough, if not you will need to modify the carb or get another.

Good luck,
AV8TOR

RE: Glow and Gas
 

what about converting to gas/alcoholl with the 50/50 mix see the gas fuel, glow plug no ignition thread here in engine conversions