RB TM523 - Major issue

[Captain Chaos]

Any one else find the block cracks righ on top of the motor mount.Just a hairline crack that causes the engine to leak and lean spike.Two engines,less than one half gallon on each,both cracked and now I have $600.00 in paper weights.Customer service won't even show me the curtisy to return an email,fax,call anything. They sell the blocks for a very unreasonable $165.00 gee thanks:whhooo:

 

[frickenjoey]

Hmmmm...I may have to check that on mine. I seem to be having the same issue on the lean. Man that sucks for sure.

 

[beason]

what rig is it in? did you land hard on the top? maybe you need a roll bar or cage?

 

[Silver78]

How many good hits did the engines take?

 

[Lessen]

How many good hits did the engines take?

Yeah.

No offense Captain but I can't imagine that any engine MFR would warranty a block that is cracked at the engine mount. However, I won't rule out the idea that there could be a flaw in the casting if it's happening without contact to the engine itself. I think the bottom line is that because of the nature of the hobby a MFR will be hesistant to warranty such a failure because they can't know for sure the extent of the punishment (for lack of a better word). If it's cracking in the same place after landing a triple smoothly, that's one thing. But they don't know and can't know that. For all they know even if it's not due to direct contact to the engine, you could have jumped a house. They certainly wouldn't warranty that even if you landed it cleanly. Since a MFR will never know the true extent of a bashing it's really not fair to expect them to warranty a failure like that. I'm not saying you dont' have a fare argument, you certainly may. I'm just saying it's unlikely to get anything out of that unless it has been a widespread issue. For instance, Traxxas warrantied a broken outdrive on my Summit. However, that failure was well known throughout the r/c community and they did their homework to find out they got a batch of poorly cast parts. If there were no such known problems I could nearly guarantee they would not warranty it.

 

[olds97_lss]

I feel for you. Especially at $165 a pop! Maybe try just cleaning it really well, grind it a bit to create a V, then fill it with long cure JB weld to seal it. For that kind of money, may be able to get some use out of those expensive paperweights you have now.

I'm on my 4th or 5th cracked crank case in my jato. 1 OS18TM and 3 TRX2.5's. 4th TRX2.5 case is installed. I know for a fact that the last 2 were not from contact. As far as I can tell, the only thing I changed structurally on the jato since the past 3 was lighter shock springs on the rear and larger wheels/tires on the rear. I gave up and put heavier springs back on in hopes that #5 makes it longer than 5 tanks of bashing like the last one...