EASYTIGER

My Feedback: (119)

I thought it would be nice to have a new thread sans politics where JJ owners could trade info and experiences. This was suggested by some a while back.
If you just want to slam jetjoe, please start your own thread. If you are a factory rep(as listed in the jetjoe website) your input is welcome.


I did five starts on my JJ yesterday, no problems at all, except the ramp up seems slow, and it would not get past 140k at full bore. Last week when I ran it, 160k was no problem. Ideas?

Jetjoe #563, full autostart, original JJ pump. Single piece tailcone.

Shok

My Feedback: (28)

I thought about buying one, does that count?

I got so see one up close last week. It looked good, but it wouldn't run. Lots of fire.
I think alot of the problem was the autostart though.

angturbines

Sounds like the pump or the battery pack, the original JJ pumps have been known to give problems,Have a look at the power reading on the FADEC,

B1Driver

My Feedback: (26)

It was my JJ-1400 at that you saw Shok. Soon as I know what exactly it was I'll post it on the this board. Most likely a failed RPM sensor or the Fadec.

Luis

Johnny Isaiah Woods

My Feedback: (81)

Hello all,
After all of the posts on the jetjoe, negative and positive, I went to the
JJ site and saw the price for the assembled engines and decided to
buy the JJ1400 (engine only). I have a Ram 500 now that is going
on my Boomerang intro and when the JJ1400 comes in I will replace
the Ram 500 and compare the operation and performance. I will use
the Ram pump, solenoids, rpm sensor, thermocouple and ECU. to
run the JJ1400. I will let everyone know the results, good or bad.
The factory is on holliday this week so the engine will not ship until
next monday. Currently my ECU will only go to 150,000 rpms so
the Jetjoe will not put out max thrust. Hopefully I will be able to
get Bob Price to adjust the max rpms at a later date.

MNModels

Hi all JJ owners,

Ok last weekend i flew my Draco with the JJ1400. Start and run was no problem. It flew the beast so there is a lot of power. Had 2 flame outs about 4 min into flight. Think it is the filter trapping bubbles. It flew at high altitude (above sea level) as well. No vertical performance as exspected. I am impressed. I will order another 1 to put in my F86. I will take out my homebuilt KJ66 and give you people a review.

I will now fit the JJ in RCARF new turbine trainer the A10X. It is much smaller and lighter. Will be great fun to have an arf jet and turbine motor all for under 2G's and with an added bonus it can be flown of a normal club size runway!!

Regards

Skymac

My Feedback: (8)

Luis, Talked to Sean last night, your motor is just now getting shipped because he forgot that he didn't have my address.

ET - Yeah either your Battery is discharged or your pump is junk, the chinese pump just dosen't have what it takes, also try putting your pump ramp value around 10.

EASYTIGER

My Feedback: (119)

So you got one!
The RPM sensor is easy enough to diagnose. Spin the turbine with the ECU on and see if it reads RPM.
What exactly is happening? Beware of some of the advice given out, don't do anything just yet.

EASYTIGER

My Feedback: (119)

Sounds like fun. And you will be flying for a lousy $599.

EASYTIGER

My Feedback: (119)

New pack, and the pump was working up to 160k just last week. Natch, though, the pump is most suspect. I did not check the parameters, maybe today I will have some time to play. The pump voltage is a user adjustable parameter on the Espeill ECU, I take it?

EASYTIGER

My Feedback: (119)

I have the "reaper" version of the draco, and was expecting about the same performance. Don't know what I will put it in next, I don't expect to keep the JJ1200 in that airplane.

Skymac

My Feedback: (8)

No you can't adjust pump voltage past the start ramp proceedure. If it more than likey the FADEC on Luis's motor with eratic RPM readouts which will quickly be diagnosed and repaired. With the Stock pump you may have to run a pump ramp as high as 15 for fast startups where the FW pump is around 5.

unknown

seanreit

My Feedback: (60)

Hey guys, sorry to just get into the thread but I wasn't going to go public unless someone brought it out first.

Here are my thoughts on the Jet Joe engine I had in Austin.

In my opinion, the engine is good thus far. I think the upgraded fliteworks pump that was sent is good. I'm fairly certain that the RPM sensor that was in the one I ran is NOT GOOD. Easy enough to replace I suppose, but certainly something that I was surprised to see.

I did get the engine to run really good on one run out of about 20 attempts, I ran it up to half throttle and when I brought it down from half it shut off.

I am fairly certain that the problems I had getting it to start were RPM sensor and/ or Fadec related, not the engine. I gave the newly boxed engine to my assistant a couple days ago to send it back and I didn't realize I didn't have an address to send it to, so Justin is sending me the correct address to send it back today to get checked over. I should have it back next week and will run it up next weekend.

Based on my experiance thus far there is no reason not to get one if you have an application for it. It looked and when it ran, ran like any other turbine I've ever run.

Considering that I've had problems with just about every turbine manufacturer for one reason or another, including RAM, Jetcat, and Merlin, I think the problem I had should be easy to overcome.

FWIW,

Sean

EASYTIGER

My Feedback: (119)

Did you buy the engine new? Or was it mussed with somehow?
Seems unusual, that the RPM sensor is bad, but not impossible. I would check that it is mounted properly, and that the magnet in the spinner is mounted as it should be, and try running a magnet around the inside of the intake to degauss it. I had a RAM that would not run until that was done, as it had gone through an airport scanner when it was shipped that changed the magnetism there. If you are running an optical sensor, who knows?
When my Espeill ECU went bad, it was due to a bad solenoid provided by jetjoe. It manifested itself very clearly with a burned out MOSFET. It was no fault whatsoever of the ECU itself. I would tend to think that a solid-state piece of electronics like that is unlikely(but not impossible) to give false readings like yours seems to be doing, I would look at the sensors attached to it first, for sure.

I agree about teething troubles being pretty common with all brands, been there, done that, but I would just as well let that subject drop, lest we have yet ANOTHER one of "those" threads.
What SN is your engine?

seanreit

My Feedback: (60)

Engine is already boxed up. But as soon as the starter motor engaged, the RPM's would go from 0 to 60 something thousand. Every single time. As far as magnets go, etc. I've bought and owned somewhere close to 10 turbines in the last three years, currently own four. I don't own the Jet Joe engine I ran, it belongs to Luis of this thread. Sent to me to run and provide an opinion. Anyway, in all my turbine experiance, the one thing I've learned is to demand that the engine run as it was advertised to be. While a manufacturer has every right to expect that I will follow written directions and that I am someone knowledgeable of how a turbine engine operates, they do not have the right to expect that I am a "technician" or someone who would be able to diagnose why an engine is not performing as it should.

I'm not an attorney, but have employed attorneys and hired them over the years and spent a little time in the courtrooms. In all that time what I have learned is that the bottom line is "What's reasonable" or reasonable to expect. I have every right to stick a Jet Joe engine new from box and stick it inside a BVM Bandit and expect that the engine will work fine and not blow my airplane up.

When I lost my Euro to a 160 siezing in flight, I was not happy, unfortunately if any of us holds the manufactuers feet to the fire, the end result could be the manufacturers pulling out and then what?

Anyway, that's my position on the whole thing, I just feel like I have a reasonable expectation that if you're gonna sell this stuff, it should work with very little input from the operator. Factory settings should work. Thank goodness for warranties and manufactueres standing by them........

EASYTIGER

My Feedback: (119)

All true.

I did NOT have that expectation when I bought mine, but nobody else had one, I figured I might have just tossed over a thousand bucks to the winds. But I knew what I was getting into. It's painful out there on the bleeding edge. Bob Parks once told me(when I was about to buy one of the first R500s) that you do NOT want to be the first kid on the block with a new turbine!

But this particular one, it was second hand? It has been played around with? It's one of the earliest ones?

At any rate, since you don't own it, and don't want to mess with it(I can understand that) and it appears to be a second hand engine anyway, with unknown modifications(correct me if I am wrong on that), I guess that the above posts will constitute the entirety of your experience. Maybe in a few years, you will want to give jetjoe another chance when they are proven more.

Any more JetJoe OWNERS out there who want to give their experiences?

seanreit

My Feedback: (60)

Wait a minute, let me clarify, I'm not busting this engines nuts at all nor am I saying anything about being first on the block. Nor is this my engine and in fact it will be back in my possesion next week to give it another go.

As far as me owning one, I can't say that will ever happen. I've not seen an airframe yet that does anything for me that could run on a 12 to 14 lb turbine, well maybe my old Kangaroo, but I was flying that on 28lb of thrust. I typically fly at better than 1:1 because that's what I personally like.

I believe the engine itself was good with a bad sensor or programming issue, put a new sensor, or wave some magic magnet and the thing might be fine.

Again, I'm not an engine technician, so I can't speak on what parts are from where, I was told this was a Jet Joe engine. I've bought other brands and never thought to ask nor have I ever cared where the parts came from, that's none of my business.

turn and burn

if this thread stays the way it is .i think that alot of good information will be past on here .it will help to find out what problems people are having.if people could put what turbine it is 12lb or 14lb kit form or ready to run that would help alot .and how long you have had it so we no when it was made .happy jj running

gregmax

I've had my JJ1400 for a little while now and it has been starting and running really well, I've posted a couple of videos of it starting and running in a previous JJ thread.
Last Sunday I changed to the single piece tail cone and ran the engine for about 4 cycles, the noise is a lot louder than with the two piece tail cone and you can actually feel it in your chest when it is flat out
I had a few problems with it though on the last couple of runs, it seemed to vibrate a bit more and I could see the bendix unwind and touch the spinner very slightly a few times. It also flamed out a couple of times when going from high speed to idle, the error message on the data terminal was "speedlow" even though it was running at idle (50000 RPM) I think (as I was not looking at data terminal at the time). on the last flame out after it had cooled down I checked to see if there were any obvious signs of either the compressor or turbine wheel rubbing, there was not but I did find that the bearing(s) had become stiff as the rotating parts would slow down very quickly when spun by fingers! Total running time so far 56 minutes and 6 cycles.
To investigate the matter I've taken the engine apart to examine if the bearings are the culprit and here are the pictures. By the way the other thing I noticed when using the single piece tail cone is the difference in the PWM needed to drive the pump. 160000 rpm; two piece pwm 400; single piece 280.

gregmax

A few more pictures

gregmax

Even more.

gregmax

When inspecting the bearings I found that the front bearing was in excellent shape but the rear bearing was very sticky like it was gummed up. I cleaned the bearing out in situ and put a drop of lube on it and it was nice a free again no tight spots or any sign of damage.
I am using Jet A1 mixed with 4% synthetic two stroke oil (Castrol TTS) whereas when running with the two piece tail cone I was using 3% castrol TTS. It looks like the oil was gumming up the rear bearing, also the shaft tunnel was a very very tight fit in the NGV and had score mark on it where it was such a tight fit. The other thing I noticed is that the CC is not attached to the diffuser like on the other "turbine" which is why I had a lot of difficulty changing the glow plug as the CC moved once the plug was removed[:'(]

Skymac

My Feedback: (8)

I have never seen that difference between the one piece and two piece cones from the engines that I have ran.

To set the fact straight to motor Sean is referring to is Direct from Joe to Myself then to Luis/Sean.


If the Engine is assembled correctly you will have absolutely no problems in changing the glow plug, Did this engine come from Andy or did you buy it Direct? I would not suggest using 2 Stroke oil however, If you noticed PST will not even warranty a motor that has been ran on 2 stroke oil. I run 5% oil here on all my Jet Joes and my original engine that I received is past the 350 minute mark and still ticking along.

****************

I have Talked to Gasper in the past and you can "Degauss" the RPM Sensor all you want but FADEC version doesn't require it nor will it work any good on it.

The Issue on the engine with Sean/Luis can be a couple of different things with the electronics but we won't know for sure until it reaches my door step so we can evaluate the situation.

****************

Greg,

Your problem with the low speed error and the engine shutting down on decel could very possibly be the Deceleration Delay being to low, try increasing this value a couple of marks and give it another go.

seanreit

My Feedback: (60)

I'll clarify one thing. I had to pull the glow plug on the engine that was sent to me and the Cumbustion Chamber did move and it was a bit of a bear to get the glow plug back in there. Also, the glow plug that was sent with the engine was nearly impossible to pull the two strands out, in fact, when I tried, it let off on the end and made the glow plug useless. We ended up using a McCoy #9 and no issues related to plug.

By the way Justin, still don't ahve your address [email protected]