Winter time nitro fun.

[R/C Ambassador]

FYI. For those who may not know, just a friendly tip. While winter running is fun, there are considerations for running in the cold. The one I will address here concerns engine temperature. All nitro engines are designed to run within a certain temperature range which effects performance and engine safety. Because most all ground model engines today have ABC (aluminum, brass, chrome) construction, and most of those engines are of the "pinch" design, if a nitro engine is not ran within the designed temperature range, then the metals will not expand the way they are designed and "sand papering" or cylinder shaving of the pinch zone can occur. If this occurs, the engine will usually run fine in cold weather, but will die in hot weather once the engine warms up. To prevent this, aluminum foil can be wrapped around the cooling head to help hold heat in. Take a temp gun and measure the engine temp at idle (after warm-up), and after a high speed pass to ensure the engine is within operational range. If the engine is running hot, then peel the foil a section (one cooling-head-fin-width) at a time until the engine runs within the specified range. Remember, leaning out the mix will not work for this. It's about retaining heat throughout the entire run. If the mix is leaned out it will only reduce the amount of oil that enters the engine and that's never a good thing. Hope this helps.

 

[CrucialRC]

Very good explanation.

 

[R/C Ambassador]

Thanks.

 

[johnnydmd]

Yeah this is really good, and it's good to see informative info like this for nitro. Too many people complain that "Nitro is hard", etc, but with more info I think that alleviates that mentality some.

 

[R/C Ambassador]

Agreed. Having worked within the industry, I have helped many people that were intimidated by nitro because of "horror stories", or not having the availability to someone who could help them along, and I completely understand someone not wanting to spend a lot of money on something that they might accidentally ruin because of lack of knowledge.