raglafart

My Feedback: (10)

Having made a post on the Silver Swallow pages I though ask, What is the worst made diesel engine you've ever bought?

Mine is the "Deezil" sold by Gotham Hobbies

I owned one of these Gotham Hobbies Deezils and was absolutely gob smacked that anyone would think they could get away with selling such a piece of junk.

The have a fairly nice quality pressure die cast crankcase but sadly that's were it all ends.
The cranhkshaft is a 3 piece affair with the crank pin pressed onto the crankweb which is in turn pressed onto the shaft ! The crankweb was only about an eighth of an inch wide !!!!
I can't remember if the rod was brass or steel but do remember the wrist pin was brass.

If you flipped it over the wrist pin would bend if it fired. I suppose is was a safety point failing first before the more complex shaft failed if it ever ran!
Was there ever a worse designed or built engine?

Why do people want to buy them and such ridiculous prices!
Mind you I wouldn't mind a Burford repro

controlliner

Imagine if the engine had front rotary valve induction. It would have the "roll your own timing" feature.

gcb

I have a replica that runs great. If I understand correctly early DEEZILS ran well. Later ones included parts made to finish out the batch and THOSE were the ones Gotham Hobbies got ahold of. Supposedly they were assembled by folks who knew nothing about engines so not only did some have bad parts but no effort was made to match them.

Back to my replica...here are some pics:

George

paw080

Hi George, my C.S. Deezil repro is a beautiful running engine. The original Deezil design was sound

enough; but the execution was junk. That is why most repros that I heard of, actually run reliably and

have decent performance for a late 1940's side port engine. The C.S. version uses modern metallurgy;

for a 2cc(.12 cu") engine I got the following results:

8X4 Russian nylon: 9,400 rpm

9X4 Taipan : 8,000rpm

10X6 Taipan; 6,300rpm

The engine still could use more run time.....

Tony

gcb

Some day I plan to build a "Ginger Snap" for it.

George

[email protected]

123Cat

It might be high tensile brass , and have good lubrication qualities, on the piston pin Ragla

raglafart

My Feedback: (10)

If there was anything high tensile about it, it bent like cheese after firing just once!
This was before of course I had taken the engine apart.
It was then I found the litany of engineering woes inside.

Were the original Deezil's made in the same way at the Gotham horrors? I can't believe that the shaft that was in mine would have lasted more than a few seconds of running before either the crankpin or crankweb fell off.
Surely they must have had a one piece shaft and not that vile contemptuous evil bit of engineering Gotham came up with?

123Cat

I agree

its highly irregular to have the main pieces made out of brass

The only way is to see whats inside an origonal

earlwb

I have some Deezils, but I could not get them to run. I plan on making a new crankshaft and have another go at it sometime. The crankshaft crank web is too thin and it literally bends if the engine catches and actually runs. Maybe a new contra piston as well. The engines I have had brass connecting rods in them as well as the brass wrist pin on the piston. But the brass rod should not be a problem and the brass wrist pin should be OK too. But that presupposes that they used a good brass alloy though. A good brass alloy is actually quite strong and can match or exceed aluminum's strength.

One other problem could be that the needle valve is too coarse for adjustments and thus one is either too lean or too rich on setting the valve. But since I couldn't get one to run, I cannot say for sure.

123Cat

My point exactly earl My car does not have a needle valve ,

and a motorcycle does not have a needle valve

so my diesel does not need a needle valve

to get bent up

coriolan

At least one was made to run after some parts matching,but not for very long before falling apart
http://youtu.be/cxB6K5zd3_M

123Cat

Ugh ,,,Quite so

There must be a Metal epidemic going around , some parts of my car engine look,d like that recently

sjpateys

Perhaps Batman will help get your money back from Gotham Hobbies if you ask him nicely!

raglafart

My Feedback: (10)

Gentlemen I rest my case!
Check out the angle of the crankpin and the thickness of the crankweb! this is at the end of the run.
I'm frankly amazed to say I've actually seen a Gotham Deezil actually run! I'm gob smacked.
I think mine fired and then felt bloody awful so had to have a look at what had happened. That was it for me, to much hassle on such a horrible piece of engineering to waste any further time on it.

I'm in shock! never ever did I expect to see video of one running! can't get over it.

Anyway, it's my number one worst engine of all time

1QwkSport2.5r

I really like the same chunk of runtime spooled over and over. I laughed watching the oil run down from the exhaust and then a couple seconds later the oil is back at the port running down. Indeed a poor example of cheap or nonexistent QC.

dennis

My Feedback: (90)

The Deezil was made by 2 of the Winton Brothers who seemed to have had a falling out with the rest of the clan. The wintons were AHC the one and only manufacturer of most of the slag engines that we all loved to hate. Things like Syncro P-30, Thor. Buzz.I think they even bankrolled the GHQ.

AMB

well I started in C/L back then missed the whole horror show on the Deezel, went to Elizabeth NJ, Drone factory met Leon Shulman , bought a drone 29 my father made up the drone fuel in the drug store flew and flew no issues EVER some how in my moves over the years lost the drone just got one from my friend compression low needs a new piston bought at same time around 1950 martin

yes I remember the Thor fiasco a couple of my buds bought them, interesting we bring up the chinese crap and we did it too right in the USA

ffkiwi

Somewhere tucked away in this forum (several years back) is a tale from Gary Edson about his trials and tribulations getting a genuine Deezil to run. As I recall, (he had several) there were two or three different crankshaft variants. I have one minus the complete carb assembly-but internally it is probably the same as rags-brass crankweb and rod-dunno about the gudgeon-I haven't had it apart. KEY INFO WARNING!!! I also acquired-at the same time-from the vendor-a set of original instructions-which specify a fuel comprised of 60% SAE No 70 or No 60 motor oil, and 40% ether-so a very 'thick' fuel mix with no kero at all. This may well be why people have so much trouble with them trying to run on modern diesel fuel-quite apart from the indifferent production quality....

ChrisM
'ffkiwi'

PS The Burford and CS ones run quite well-at least as good as an ED Comp Special-which is the same displacement so a direct comparison can be made. As paw080 said above-there's nothing wrong with the basic design......

gcb

I enjoyed watching that oil too. I never had a REAL DEEZIL but I borrowed one from a friend to use disassembled on a display for a Junior High School Science Fair. Worked fine for that!
I also briefly had a Thor that someone had given me but alas it had already been run. I thought it was missing a ring because the compression was so bad but later found out that the groove was supposed to retain lubricant.
Never had a GHQ but I think most people's problem with them was that they were timed to run clockwise. You had to re-time them to run CCW.

George

Edit: Anyone else notice that MK-17 sitting next to the DEEZIL at first? I have several of those and all are good runners.

123Cat

A friend had a Mk17 in a controline model and it started good

ffkiwi

The MK-17s (the MK-16 is near identical but has a cast in venturi without a separate insert) abound on Ebay and are very good value generally-a good sport no nonsense 1.5 diesel-a few people have even grafted R/C carbs onto them (usually an OS or TT10 one) and found they throttle well. They seem to come from multiple sources (ie multiple manufacturers) in the USSR/Russia as you find minor detail differences from engine to engine and variable casting quality-not mention anodising-I've seen crimson, scarlet and pink ones.... I'm unsure if they're still in current production-but there are a lot of them in circulation. I suspect that in the 'old days' they were produced in quantity as an entry level engine for C/L and F/F beginners in the structured aeromodelling classes that used to be widespread in the former USSR. A lot were exported in the 1990s-and I could buy them new in NZ for NZ$60-at which price they were a bargain. I think you can still get them from Carlson and possibly Mecoa....

ChrisM
'ffkiwi'

ffkiwi

As I recall at the end of their marketing period (early 50's?) they were being sold-as a self assembly kit-for the princely sum of $1.95.......!

ChrisM
'ffkiwi'

earlwb

Well there was no internet back then. News and information traveled slowly and tended to be very localized at the time. They quickly quit advertising in the model airplane magazines and started advertising in magazines such as Popular Science and Popular Mechanics. In these ads they didn't mention model airplanes either. The people who would see the ads were less likely to be aware of the problems with the engines. Thus they could continue to sell the paperweights like that for a longer time. Anyone who bought one was unable to really pass on the word about it.