Pleaz give me the good, bad, and the ugly of this engine.
Need one for the Venus. Price is appealing..thanx.

Tower 46 and GMS47

The Good

Price is appealing,
Power produced by the engine is exceptional
Spare parts are cheap
Seems to last well. I have one that is good as new with 100 flights on it.
Has muffler compatibility with the OS 46 FX. Which means that there are a lot of after market and Pitts style mufflers available for it.

The Bad

There is some variability in quality.
The most common being the fit of the barrel in the carb body.
Air leaks are often suspected. The resultant most common
symptom being that the engine will not shut off with the
throttle.

The center muffler screw tends to pull out of the center of the front piece of the muffler, causing you to loose the back of the muffler. It is best that a threaded rod be run all the way through the muffler with double nuts on each end.

I have three of them and there are three Tower 46's and one GMS 47 and the field and except for one of the Towers not wanting to shut off, everyone is happy with them.

There is very little interchangeble between the Tower 46 and the GMS 47 except the carb and the muffler. They are made by the same company and one engine runs the same as the other. I just wanted you to know that they are NOT EXACTLY the same in every respect.

I believe I've read that they share a lot of common parts, and perhaps the entire manufacturing process, as those that come out as GMS.47s. If that is indeed the case, these motors are notorius for air leak problems. I've read similar complaints between the GMS and the Tower motor not wanting to shut down and/or leaning out too much during flight. I personally owned the GMS .47 and got sick and tired of fighting it. Gave up and bought ThunderTiger. One of my smarter moves.

I have a Tower 46 and it runs great, but only on 15% or higher fuel. The carb spring was installed backwards when it was new and broke. Bought a new spring and put it in the right way and it has been a very reliable engine, around 100 flights, not as powerfull as my OS 46 FX's, but not bad for the price. I would would say spend the extra money and put an OS 46 FX, you won't regret it.

I would look at a Thunder Tiger 46 first, I got a Tower 46 for my brother as a birthday gift and had all the problems but another had one at my club and have had no trouble so it's pot luck getting a good one, TT is a better chance of getting a good engine for the same price and not too many problems and this is comeing from a OS guy but OS 46FX is about $45 more and just noticed the Thunder Tiger is $5 cheaper than the Tower engine. http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...1&I=LXKF97&P=0

Dauntae

I had one and had to send it back to tower. It would not shut down, lacked power, and the muffler casting cracked. The Thunder Tiger costs the same and has none of these problems. I am glad I replaced the tower motor with a TT .46. Runs great.