Hey people i would like to share the story of my engine 0S MAX AX .46 which was in a very very bad condition .
A few year back i bought this engine i flew it once and then i just forgot about it , it was kept on the shelf for straight 6 years with no oil . A few days back i found my engine i tried spinning it and nothing happened it was fully gummed up with castor oil . The engine was in such a bad condition that the only color i could have seen was of the dried castor oil . I wanted to get this engine back to life and this is what i did .

1) I tried to open the head of the engine but the screws were very very tight i could not have opened them so , i kept the engine in kerosene oil for 3 straight days . ON the third day when i took it out i could have seen a lot of castor oil was gone but still the engine was not moving

2) after getting it out and drying it i tried to unscrew the nuts and voila it did . I in my life had seen nothing as dirty as the inside of this engine covered with castor oil , i could see the piston stuck to the combustion chamber . I then thought lets open the back plate and see what is it like in there , and it was as bad if not worse than the piston the connecting rod was struck with mass of dried up oil it was not a good experience for my nose and eyes

picture of the connecting rod

3) After seeing this i removed the head of the engine and baked the whole thing inside an oven for 10 mins . After it started to cool down i could have felt the engine moving a bit , but even this was not enough

4) I then took the engine and boiled it for 10 mins, this time around a lot of old oil was coming out of the engine i took it out and it still was not moving properly

5) I then soaked the engine for 30 mins in denatured alchol and blow dried it with a hair blower the engine now was free


6) I brushed the engine with a mild tooth brush and cleaned the connecting road , piton , back plate with good quality ear buds (plastic sticks with cotton on them) i used a whole box to clean all the oil residue


7) Now that it was cleaned up it had great compression so i just oiled every thing with a small painting brush reaching into the bearing

8) At last i assembled every thing and this is how it looks now


A video of the engine running - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5394GU7nyYQ

Raj92,

Was that all castor lube in the fuel? That's a lot of deposits left inside.

In the last pic, it shows the fins of the cylinder head in the wrong position. It needs to be turned 90 degrees.

hello sir ,
would you be kind enough to see the video which i have posted and let me know if there is anything wrong

thank you

and also the last time i ran it before storing it in the shelf was on 70% methanol and 30% castor oil

A good success story. You said that you boiled the engine for 10 minutes. What did you boil it in? Do you know about the crock pot method and antifreeze? (no boiling though) Thanks for sharing!

hello sir ,
thank you for taking your time out to read it . I just used plain water to boil it i know its not good for the engine and the bearing but i dried it out in the oven and blow dried it as well

and yes i do know about the anti freeze and crock pot but in my country we dont get antifreze and crockpot are expensive

+1

Yes raj what blw and others have been trying to say there is something wrong. In the photo and the video with your engine running you have reinstalled the cylinder head crosswise, it needs to be rotated ninety degrees either way so the fins are aligned fore and aft in the direction of flight or you could experience excessive overheating.

John

Thank you for bringing that to my notice i did run it once with the head in the wrong place as it can be seen in the video but i have corrected it now good thing i ran it only for 30 seconds once with the head in the wrong place

thanks alot

I did that thanks for getting it in my notice

You are welcome raj and by the way may I offer a belated welcome to the forum

Since you are using 100% castor oil in your fuel (in other words all the oil in your mix is castor and not a mixture of synthetic and castor oil which is more common in this country) this is the reason that your engine stuck or became stiff with disuse more readily.

Actually The dried castor can serve to preserve your engine but I just wanted to say that the common denominator in all the methods of freeing up engines stuck with dried castor is 'Heat' and there are as many ways to free up a stuck engine as there are ways to apply heat. This includes the crock pot method.

One method that I on occasion quite successfully use especially on engine stuck with past use of hi castor content is to install a propeller on the engine and heat it in an oven for a short period then simply with gloves of course apply a gentle rocking action back and forth. This may require several mild reheats but its surprising how effective this can be.

John

John's right, welcome to all of the forums. Hope you feel at home here.

Another quick method to free up dried castor is to just fill up the insides of the engine with glow fuel and let it sit for a while. It dissolves dried castor like heat.