by iflylilplanes » Wed Jan 02, 2013 3:12 pm
I have been running glow engines without nitro for 40 years, both 2 and 4 stroke. Any motor that had trouble running I just added an on board battery that heated the plug at idle. The running of fuel with nitro added will make the engine more powerful depending on the % of nitro, if you want to run nitro 5% seems to be the best for flying, it keeps the plug alight at idle.
The one draw back with nitro fuels is that the burning of nitro has a byproduct of nitric acid, this can cause corrosion inside the motor unless you put an after run oil in the motor at the end of the days flying. By the way the term nitro engine was coined by the car and boat guys over the last 5 or 6 years, the 2 dimensional RC hobbies (cars and boats) used nitro fuels to get the speed up. Us, of the 3 dimensional, more skillful hobby of RC flight are getting 300K out of Formula 1 pylon racers on standard 4 to 1 fuel without nitro, speeds that cars and boats still could not get on 100% nitro.
The best glow fuel is 20% castor oil to 80% methanol, when running in a new engine you can go up to 25% castor oil 75% methanol.
Castrol sell castor oil here in Australia, and Shell A racing fuel is an Ok methanol, it has a perfume, flavor and color added but works well, if you can get pure methanol without the additives that works as well.
Many Thanks,
Dave W.
Dead Stick Glide Distance: Half the distance from the airplane to the nearest emergency landing field.