Maxam

My Feedback: (62)

Roger Please do not run the engine further until that bolt is resolved. Patience will payoff. The strain on that unbolted portion can result in catastrophic engine damage!!!! The cylinder can break loose thus destroying the crank, master rod and crankcase. I just read about the critical nature of cylinder base bolts in full size aircraft in a recent Sport Aviation Journal. -Tom

Heli-NuBee

Hey maxam (Tom), thanks for keeping me honest and motivated. After reading your post, I gave it one more try and for some reason, this time it was sucessful. Maybe the second heat cycle on the engine was enough to allow the bolts to loosen and turn. Any way, I was able to remove the broken stub without any problem after I removed the cylinder. I have included a picture of the complete broken bolt. I feel much better now that I know the engine is repaired properly. I noticed that the rocker arms, valves and valve train were very dry while disassembling the engine, so I removed all of the rocker arm covers and oiled the valve trains well. Now the Saito 450 radial engine powered Gilmore Red Lion racer is ready for its maiden flight.

Best wishes and good safe flying.

Heli-NuBee (AKA Roger the radial rabbit)

Maxam

My Feedback: (62)

Roger, Well done. Please recheck the bolts after a couple of runs! I am relieved too.

gesmale

My Feedback: (40)

Tom and Roger, After following you guys on this thread, I am getting the radial bug. Should I get my Seidel 540 running or try the ASP 400? The Seidel was on an Icon Northwest 1/4 scale Monocoupe 90A. I think this project will be the quickest to satisfy this urge. Your thoughts. George

Heli-NuBee

Hey George, I love my radials. I now have four including a Saito 200 R3, a Saito 450 R3, a UMS Evolution 777, and an ASP 400. I don't have any experience with the ASP as yet but judging from the forum on RCUniverse, the ASP may have more quality and reliability issues than the Saito & UMS brands. I love my Saito 200 and the UMS 777 but I don't have much experience with the Saito 450 as yet and I have not even run the ASP 400. However, folks that have those ASP 400s seem to love them. Both my Saito 450 and the ASP 400 will be in operation very soon. I will defer to Tom about which engine will give you the best performance and bang for the buck. He is much more knowledgeable about radial engines and I have found him to be very helpful.

Best wishes and good safe flying.

Heli-NuBee (AKA Roger the radial rabbit)

gesmale

My Feedback: (40)

Roger, Thanks for your input. I may just have to fly out and see your operation. George

Maxam

My Feedback: (62)

George, I have 5 radials in airplanes in flying condition. They really are a lot of fun but do take effort. I finally ran my ST 540 and figured out how to make it run well. It did not at first! Simple fix. I have run nearly all of them! Let me know if you want to get the 540 running well. -Tom

gesmale

My Feedback: (40)

Tom, I am all ears. I have followed your advice and flushed out the 540 with air tool oil. Next I was going to set and oil the valves rockers. Then I was going to mount it to a run stand and set up the glo system. Then what? George

Maxam

My Feedback: (62)

OK George, First is there a collector ring installed? If so remove it so the exaust of the individual cylinders can be observed with just the straight pipes installed. The carb is a poor choice for the engine but can be made to work well. Adjust the throw of the carb where full throttle is just over only half way. The choke area is too large. The idle air bleed hole is too small and needs to be drilled out to a slightly larger size. I am not at home so I cannot tell you right now what the size is. The carb needs to be removed and taken apart to do this. Once this is done and you have the engine mounted up you can start it and tune it as best as you can. I recommend a Xoar 20x10 prop. When running, at mid throttle (which is really 1/4 travel!) are the cylinders even? On mine facing the engine the top cylinder and the one to its right were overly rich and the others where lean. I rotated the carb so that the needle valve was closer down toward the engine mount. People assume the mixture leaves the carb into the engine in a homogeneous manner. It does not especially at part throttle positions! Changing the carb orientation can have dramatic effects on fuel distribution! When I did this the fuel distribution was more even to all cylinders resulting in a really smooth running engine with excellent throttle response. I would be happy to discuss this on the phone. Study the saito 325 5 cylinder radial. It actually has a mixture distrbution impeller thus insuring equal distribution.

Heli-NuBee

Fly out anytime George. We always enjoy visits from our friends.

Heli-NuBee (AKA Roger the radial rabbit)

SrTelemaster150

The ASP 400R5 is JUNK!

There's an 83 page thread on guys trying to keep these things running.

Quality control is dismal & test stand intial run up failure is common.

Crankcase (rotating assembly & cams related) parts are also not as easy to come by as for quality radials in this displacement range.

Once shipping is added to the price of a ASP 400R5, another $250 will get you a Saito FA450R3D.

gesmale

My Feedback: (40)

Thanks to every one for the information. I will post my progress. George

Heli-NuBee

My Saito 450 radial engine powered Gilmore Red Lion racer had its maiden flight today. Everything went quite well and I am pleased with the plane and engine. The plane flys well and is very stable. I had so much fun doing the maiden flight I had to fly it again the second time. The engine seems to run best at 1/2 to 3/4 throttle. It does not seem to want to run well at full throttle. 1/2 to 3/4 throttle is fine though because it flys the plane well. I had plenty of power and the plane was certainly fast enough at those throttle settings. It looks as though I have another winner. I second flight was seven minutes long and the engine used about 22 ounces of fuel. I had about 1/3 left on the 32 ounce tank at the end of the flight. I wish I could find someone local that could or would do some videos because the club fellow who used to do a great job passed away and no one else seems to be able to do a good video.

Best wishes and good safe flying.

Heli-NuBee (AKA Roger the radial rabbit)

earlwb

It is hard to say if the ASP 400 radial is really all that bad, there were a small number of guys in that long running thread that had problems. But ASP has made quite a few engines though. We don't hear anything from those people who didn't have any problems. But still maybe it was the collectors scarfing the engines up for display purposes so we might not know if the engines work or not. So it may really boil down to whether you feel lucky or not.

Maxam

My Feedback: (62)

Roger, Some Saito 3 cylinder engines do not get even distribution of fuel to all three cylinders. At full throttle you might be having either one cylinder going wery rich or very lean. Read back a few posts where I was giving George some ideas with his ST540. You might try the partial carb rotation method and/or adjust the throws so that full throttle is 3/4 open on the carb and tune the engine for that adjustment. -Tom

Heli-NuBee

Tom, I agree, 3/4 throttle is fine and works great with this plane. It would take some modifications to rotate the carb at this point so I will just change the end point on the throttle setting. Thanks for your input.

Best wishes and good safe flying.

Heli-NuBee (AKA Roger the radial rabbit)

Heli-NuBee

I am making more progress on my ASP 400 radial engine powered CMP Zero. It is nearing completion and should be ready for first engine runs in the near future. I completed installing the radio componets and the batteries today, adjusted the control throws and also checked the retracts before I glued the retract inserts into place. My luck continues to follow me though, because one of the retracts quit operating as soon as the inserts were glued into place. Oh well, I just have to have a few challenges in every build I do.

Best wishes and good safe flying.

Heli-NuBee (AKA Roger the radial rabbit)

SJN

Looks good, I hope you beefed up the landing gear mounts, or they will tear out pretty easy.

Heli-NuBee

My ASP 400 radial engine powered CMP Zero is now ready for engine break-in runs. I pre-oiled the engine well. First I removed the valve rocker covers on all five cylinders and oiled the valve train well. I also placed oil in the crankcase vent and hung the engine nose down. Oil was seeping from the front prop bearing and the valve push rod tubes. I rotated the engine frequently to insure that oil was distributed through out the engine. I sure hope that the engine is now well lubed and I don't have any premature faliures due to lack of lubrication. I noticed that the valve train was quite dry so I'm sure it was wise to do the pre-lube. I still have a problem with one of the ESM electric retracts though. The motor runs continously and nothing happens. There does not appear to be any way to disassemble the retract so I guess I will have to return it to TBM.

Best wishes and good safe flying.

Heli-NuBee (AKA Roger the radial rabbit)

Heli-NuBee

I had the good fortune of running my ASP 400 five cylinder radial engine for the first time today. The engine started easy and ran quite well. I managed to get a full hour of run time today. The engine is running pretty well and I am not sure how much more break-in time will be necessary before beginning to fly the CMP Zero. Here is a short video on one of the latter engine runs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u06n...ature=youtu.be

Best wishes and good safe flying.

Heli-NuBee (AKA Roger the radial rabbit)

kochj

Ran my saito 325 radial last week end.... (we have had nothing but rain the last 4-days) so no more run in's

I am very happy with my purchase and can't believe, how nice these radials run....almost NO VIBRATIONS!...
Or DIS-harmonic vibs going on......

I have noticed the price of the saito 450 has come down to 1,100$ and that is what is was before the 500$ hike up 3years agao... or was it 2???
Anyhow..... I am very temped to pick it up and throw a C&H ignition on it and also a gas carb....
It would be less than the saito gas conversion coming out this summer....but would be a few less cc's than it as well...

NOt sure how that would effect power output, as I am guessing that the case was also planed, so it would have a higher compression.. (just like the saito 36,20 I know they upped the cc's to 40cc and 21cc )

Either way.... I am very glad I purchased mine....

I spoke with Adrian, and he had said he was working on a ignition for the saito 5cy 325!.....
I will pony up for that in a second....

Justin.

Heli-NuBee

The maiden flight of my ASP 400 radial engine powered CMP Zero did not go well today. The flight started well, it took off nicely, had plenty of power and only required a small amount of left and down trim. However, a minute or two into the flight, the engine began to loose power. We pulled the power back and gained some power back but not much. We had plenty of altitude so we set up for landing. The weather was a bit on the breezy side with a quarting wind. Everything seemed OK on the landing aproach until about one foot above the runway we caught a strong gust that popped the plane up to about three feet above the runway at a speed that was too low resulting in a stall and fall to the runway. We could have prevented that if the engine would have responded to throttle but it would not. The fusalage is in perfect condition but the stall and fall did considerable damage to the wing. The landing gears went through the wing on both sides. My good friend and I do these maiden flights together and he felt so bad about the damage that he took the wing home to repair it (he was on the sticks for the landing). The plane seemed a bit on the tailheavy side for landing but seemed OK for flying with the CG set per manufactures specs at 145 mm. I am not sure why we lost power on the engine but the most likely cause would be going lean during the flight. I had the needle valve open two turns and the engine ran great on the ground. This was a disappointing day but all is not lost and the Zero will probably fly again.

Best wishes and good safe flying.

Heli-NuBee (AKA Roger the radial rabbit)

maydotec

Hello radial engine enthusiasts!

Now the all new generation of SEIDEL radial engines is available! Please have a look at our website www.maydotec.com

Stephen

Heli-NuBee

Hi Stephen, How do these engines differ from the UMS 160 and 260 seven cylinder gas engines?

Heli-NuBee

I flew my Saito 200 radial engine powered Sea Gull Sea Fury again today. That combination works well and gets a lot of attention at our flying field.

Best wishes and good safe flying.

Heli-NuBee (AKA Roger the radial rabbit)