• Welcome to RCTalk! 🚀

    Join the #1 RC community where hobbyists connect, share, and get expert advice on RC cars, trucks, boats, drones, and more!

    • Friendly & passionate RC enthusiasts
    • RC tips & troubleshooting
    • Buy, sell & trade RC gear
    • Share builds & upgrades

Newbie with idle issues!

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate
links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

sparki4WD

RC Newbie
Messages
4
Reaction score
0
Points
0
RC Driving Style
  1. Bashing
Hi All, I am new to RC nitro cars but not rc as I fly airplanes normally - my wife bought me a surprise birthday present of an ACME Condor, and I have read all the bad things but have seen a lot of good things also on youtube and other forums, and my experience has not been bad so far, as I know any nitro engine is all about, breaking in fiddling and tuning, fine tuning, nitro percentage, glow plug temp etc. etc.

But my question is this:

I start with 1mm gap on carb idle setting, with stock needle settings, but these are too rich and just bog down and stall, although it idles ok, when I lean out the LSN engine revs increase a bit, car responds better but bogs down at half throttle, I lean out the HSN and it helps but speeds up the idle, my idle scrw is now set to almost fully closed! and there is still a lot of smoke and excess oil/fuel from exhaust with too much engine heat also. I am going to strip down and check for air leaks as from reading many tuning posts and watching vids this is all I can think is happening.

Car wants to drive itself away, he he.

It is very cold here now, I am using no.3 plug hot & 16% nitro.

Any help much appreciated.
 
If you are breaking in a new engine, you don't want any part of full throttle. Just make it idle and respond to enough throttle to slowly drive around for 2 or 3 of tanks.
After that, get back to us and we'll take you to the next step of the break in.
 
How cold is very cold? Also if you're breaking in a new engine - cold is not your friend. I'd wait for warmer weather.

And Welcome to RCNT!

Hi, thanks for your response :) - Engine has been run in - was warmer than current conditions (about 15 or so) it is now down to about 3 degrees Celsius here in the UK, I did 2 tanks at idle with no problems, 3rd very slow circuits, 4th tanks same, 5th & 6th tank I went up and down the road up to half throttle, 7 & 8 were long straight runs hitting full throttle, then a bit of bashing from there, I now was confident that I could fine tune the engine, but this lead to over revving at idle and caused over heating (which was happening on the later tanks anyway)

-- I stripped down the engine and followed the advice of 'squirrelod' on you tube to search for air leaks as I could almost fully close the carb and it still idle way too high! and hay presto! I found three on my new team infinity .18 engine - back plate, carb mount, & the seal on the fuel tank was also leaking air!

I am waiting for some high temp instant gasket to arrive to make the fixes before firing up again. Will let you know.

This wasn't too bad as I noticed one of the engine bolts was coming loose so had to strip of head, exhaust manifold just to get to that - (the bolt did have signs of thread lock too but it obviously didn't work)

I am sure that this is the source of my overheating and inability to tune this engine now.

Thanks for responding. Will keep you posted on how it goes.
 
Ok, all fixed! Once I had engine out I also tested the front crankshaft bearing, this was also leaking! I have replaced this with a better one, not one from team infinity! and sealed all leaks, it now runs like a dream and has loads of power and keeps a tune! after a bit more reading I realised that the engine came with a no.4 plug and the hobby shop supplied 16% nitro - I replaced plug with a hot no.3 and this has helped loads also. I will buy 20-25% nitro next time and revert to no.4 plug. Also no over heating! Yeah
 
Back
Top