I just got a used Easy Fly high wing trainer equiped with an MDS .40 engine. It has reportedly never been flown and the ARF certainly looks that way. The engine is unfamiliar to me and has a rather different looking glow plug. Anybody have any experience with this engine that can provide any input on reliability, fuel type, glow plug usage, etc.? Thanks, Jackhy

The MDS 40 caused a lot of consternation among many people 5 or 6 years ago.

A few people could get one to run correct.

The MDS line were a good running engines of reasonable quality. The same can not be said for the .40. There are several long threads where I and others attempted to get our .40s to run reasonably without success. Maybe you will lucky and yours will run. Try zero nitro fuel with an idle bar plug and if that doesn't do it cut your losses and move on to another engine. I spent an entire summer fooling with a pair of these and it was wasted time. A confusing factor here is that many will jump in and post about the wonderful results they are having with some other displacement MDS product.

Toss the stock glow plug after break-in and install a OS#8 or enya #3, the stock plug is junk. I have run a few of the MDS engines and found that the carbs were a problem on many of them. Some were fine while others were awful. QC on the carbs was spotty at best. I used 5% nitro and a prop that would let the engine wind up a bit. The MDS engines like to turn up, so don't overload it with too much prop. Use like a APC 10X6 or smaller.

To: rcdude7,stripes, and w8ye
Thanks for the input on my MDS40 engine which is not good news but what the hey, I'll give the advice a try. The engine looks brand new as does the plane although the age was not know by the buyer who got it from an estate I believe. Maybe I'll be lucky and hope it will be better than my previous TT42 engine which I never could get satisfactory performance out of[]--it would simply like to stop in midair, often in undesirable locations!!

You better read engine tuning 101 Cause If you can't get a TT42 to run your not going to get a MDS to run at all. Manual can be down loaded from RIPMAX in England. 5% nitro ,Fox Idle bar long plug. any 10x6 prop.