Hi, I have the Tower ST-15 stadium truck and while I am pleased with it's performance I don't like the air filter setup, it has the cup with two foam disks. I have 8 tanks of fuel through the truck and I have had to wash the elements three times already to get it to run. GRanted it is dry and dusty here in Wyoming and I have been running it a lot in gravel and dirt, but I just ain't very happy with it. I also noticed that if I put a couple drops too much filter oil in the thing that it won't let the engine run proper. I experimented running it without the filter on the street and it runs very fast, then I put the filter on and it will stall the engine, or if it runs it will slow it down a lot. Since I went the cheapskate way and bought this truck instead of one of the popular ones, I don't know what aftermarket filter will fit it, and I havn't measured the carb diameter yet, but I can if it would help someone to help me match a good filter to this truck. My use for this IS NOT racing, nor will it ever be, but even running around the yard and at the park I would like the engine to be performing at it's best.

Thanks in advance for your help,
George

I don't know the carburetor diameter either, but get a MotorSaver air filter that will fit it when you find out. They're great! You won't believe the increase in engine performance once you put it on.

Also, NEVER run your truck without the air filter on it! Trust me, one minute little particle of whatever will kill your engine. My dad and my grandfather were working on an old Glastron jet boat the other day, and the carburetor started leaking, and to see where it came from they ran the engine without the air filter (or air resistor, as it is called on this engine). I came outside and saw what they're doing and gave them some grief about it... Being only 14, they blew me off a bit, but I made them put it back on with force! Luckily, we had no more problems with it; turns out the engine was flooded.

What a familiar characteristic... Hah!

Thanks for your suggestion to go with the motorsaver brand of wir filter. I like the looks of their stuff and I was abel to match the size to my truck, which BTW is a .0435" O.D. on the carb intake. As to running it witout the filter, I understand that is not good for it, but I also know it's not a certain kill either, although it is much worse for these small engines than it is for a larger engine. While I am a total noobie to R/C stuff, my backgroud is building racing engines for drqag cars and restorations, as well as being a machinest so I'm not new to the internal combustion engine by no stretch of the imagination.

thanks again for your input,
George

You're welcome.

The reason I was so punctual, so to speak, on that, is because I've seen an engine die before because of not having an air filter on. It makes you be more careful about these things once you see them happen.

I have rebuilt engines that were run without filters (on full size vehicles) and some of the scratches in the cylinder walls were deep enough to get a fingernail into, and that is just rediculous. I hope you didn't think I was refuting your advice, you are correct that it is not good at all to run without an air cleaner, although contrary to your, and my own advice it is done on occasion for short peroids of time when trying to diagnose engine problems.

thanks,
George

That is true. When you need to diagnose an engine, it is often necessary to take off the air filter. I've had to do this myself a few times. About the jet boat story, my uncle was watching from the side (he's really cool to me) and told me they had been running without the air resistor for a few minutes. It wasn't a particularly safe area to do it in either; it was at my lake house where there isn't a paved road for a mile or so. Lots of dust around there too, and I knew that if just a couple pieces of large dust were to get in there, something bad could happen.

This engine is old too... They had them in the early 1970's Corvettes! It's a 305 cubic-centimeter V8, and I definitely DO NOT want to see that go down the drain because of the lack of an air filter, if you know what I mean.

I understand completely, and not trying to be mean here, but it is cubic inches, not cubic centemeters on the engine you are talking about. It is a small block Chevy engine and if it is a 305 then it is a V-8 with a bore of 3.740" and a stroke of 3.48" It is the little brother to the much more commmon 350 which had a 4" bore and the same 3.48" stroke. these are good engines and Chevy has made in 10 different factory displacememnts starting production in 1955 with the 265 cubic inch version and had a production run of close to 100 million before changing to the new generation of engines starting in 1999.

I hope you didn't take this as a "I know everything" statement, just that this happens to be one of my specialties and you seem like the person who would appreciate the extra knowledge, as we all have something to share.


Have fun,
George

By having your dad put the air resistor on didnt add anything really filter-wise. That part is 100% for blocking any flame that might backfire out of the carb... which is why it is usually referred to as a flame arrestor in the marine industry. Many race-boats.. such as Opel, Eliminator, etc.. don't even run the flame arrestor sometimes. The reason for this is that there is really no dirt particles on the water. The arrestor will stop LARGE objects from entering the engine.. like a bug or something.. but by having him put it back on while working on it at the house didnt really matter. Course.. ive had it backfire out of the carb when timing the 351 in my old 77 SeaRay.. lol luckily i had the arrestor on tho.. nothing but smoke came out of it lol.

As far as nitro engines go, always run with an air-filter to be safe. When im in the garage messing with it on the stand, i sometime's won't. If you start running it around however, definately stick it on there. People sometimes get a little too panicky about running without a filter. Its perfectly fine if your in a clean envionment.. such as on a 1:1 car in driveway timing it or something, or your nitro car on its stand while tuning. The problem comes when people run it around on the street or in the dirt where it can suck in dirt and whatnot. If your street was good and clean and you did it for only a short while, I wouldn't worry about it at all.

Also on full scale engines, dust isn't quite the killer that it is on our model engines. Our engines use a cylinder wall that is smaller at the top to create compression, while in a full scale engine you have piston rings to aid in the seal. They are a little more tolerant to scratches. Plus a dust sized scratch on a full scale engine is very small in comparison to one on a model engine.

D'oh! I knew that...

Well, I didn't know all that. Thanks for the information guys! George, I didn't take any of your comments to be the least bit offensive. I'm here to learn, and I suppose I was wrong here. No, wait, I was wrong here... But that's why I'm here, so thanks for the information guys! I didn't know that about a flame arrestor, and that is what my grandfather referred to it as, I just remember it sounding like "resistor" instead of "arrestor" to me.

And obviously, those engines are more tolerant to things like that, because they are simply bigger. So, therefore, the same dust particles that would severly hurt a nitro engine probably would not hurt a regular sized engine that bad or not at all. I'm still learning at 14 years, so bear with me!

Hey, it's just fun for me to see a 14 year old that is actually open to learning about this stuff. I made a lot of money between the ages of 18 and 25 by building race engines and restoring old cars, engines and all. I have built several show winners as well as race winners and I hated to move out here cause it kinda meant the end of that for me, but it was fun and when I was your age I wasn't into models, I was already working in my Dad's shop turning wrenches on antique cars. I rebuilt my first V-8 when I was 12 and from there I was hooked. You definately have much more knowledge on R/C's and Nitro enginesa than I do and I think it's great when people can openly share their knowledge and realise that each has an area of expertise without getting their feelings hurt. I goota go for now, going to go do some handloading for my target rifle in case I get to go to the gun club this weekend, but thanks again for all the good information.

have fun,
George

Thanks man, I appreciate that.

Yeah, my dad and I are going to restore his old 1987 Alfa Romeo Milano, so I'll probably learn a bunch from that. Though we won't be going into the engine very much if at all, we have to replace the power steering pump and work on the exhaust system. I'll probably bombard him with questions though, so I'll still probably learn a lot. Both my dad and grandfather know a lot about engines, but I take the lead in nitro engines. I can tell my dad really wants to do stuff with nitro cars, but he doesn't want to buy one and he's really busy (he's an architect) most of the time so he doesn't have much time to just mess around. However, usually on the weekend, we go up to my lake house and that's a great area for fun, dusty bashing. I'm getting my engine for my T-Maxx fixed under warranty repairs right now, but when it gets back, I'll have my HPI MT2 and Traxxas T-Maxx running, so maybe I'll let him drive... Well, I'm not sure which one yet... The T-Maxx is getting an O.S. .18 CV-RX in it, so that may be a bit hard to control for someone who has only driven electrics... And the MT2 is practically my child (haha, not really, but it is still new and so I'm scared that he'll crash it ) so I may just let him get used to my electric Rustler before he tackles the nitro cars. Given, he knows how to work on nitros better than electrics, but the electrics (mine are, anyways) aren't as fast or have nearly as much torque as my nitro cars do. I can't wait to see what my T-Maxx does with that O.S. .18 CV-RX engine in it! It had a cracked carburetor when I took it out of the box... [:'(]

Well, enough of my off-topic rambling. Have fun shootin' (what we Alabamians refer to hunting as... )

Thanks!

Oh come on now, let your Dad run whichever one he wants to, I'm sure he will pay to fix it if he breaks it[8D]Besides, he needs to have fun too

George