Strip engine!

I proceed to strip the engine to access the damage.

First remove back plate.
Remove the engine from the mount, then use the crank shaft locking tool to remove the clutch, fan.

Remove the carburetor.

Remove the heat sink. There is a small notch on top of piston for realignment when assembling.

Next remove the cylinder sleeve. Mine is quite tight, so i heat it up in the oven n then push from behind with the back of toothbrush.

Now the slide the con rod out from the crankshaft and piston can be removed.

Slide out the crankshaft and we are left with the 2 bearings. Heat it in oven for 5mins. then hit the engine case against something hard. The rear bearing will drop out. Freshly baked TT50, kekeke try not to let your other half see this.

Same with front bearing, heat in oven then push it out from inside.

Place everything neatly so that its easy for reassembling
The crankshaft is badly rusted! The larger rear bearing rusty as well. Feels notchy when i turn it. Front bearing looks ok and the rest of the engine are fine. Time to get replacements.

Maintenance time - engine rattling

Pics tell it all. Starting to hear funny noise from engine, rattling at normal, high pitch at idle up. open up the back plate n wah didnt know so bad til WY told me. Time for some maintenance after almost 9 gallons through the TT50.

More pics to come when i dissemble the whole engine. Well at least i managed to try out some full autos today before this downtime.

Brownish crankshaft. Bearings looked rusty as well. Haiz

Canopy Spraying

The last few gallons were spent learning and practicing backward flights. Boy, its one of the tougher maneuvers, yet... During which there were many occasions when i couldnt judge which way the heli was tilting. The whole yellow canopy didn't give much perception of depth. So i decided to put some colours onto the stock canopy that came with the kit.
Prepare the surface for spraying. This is the most important part for most spray jobs. Its hard to for paint to stick to the raptor's bleech bottle canopy so the first step is to sand it rough! I started with 240 grit sandpaper, then 400 before finish up with 600.

See all the mess!
Wipe clean the dust with cloth and use a lighter to slightly torch the surface. Then clean again with alcohol.

Found a use for those fuel bottles, can use them as spraying stand. I spray white paint as base coat. Let dry, sand and spray another coat, sand again. Now its really smooth and ready for some colour.

Mask with masking tape.
Again spray 2 coats. Found that paint didnt stick well to some parts, sand and spray again. Still not complete yet, wah its dam tedious all those sanding n spraying. No wonder those custom canopies costs so much.

Good read

Found another great heli site while searching for tips on doing funnel.

Check out www.scotiabladerunners.ca. Great technical details and good pictures that explain some of the concepts very clearly.

Heli mania tbp

Pics from an unexpected large turnout of helis today at tbp. Saw a R90 flew , very stable, very nice. Big is definitely better.


Helis all over the place

R90 sui ah
How many guys does it take to start a heli? Five. One to hold the blade, one to hold the starter, one to hold the glow plug starter, one to tune the throttle, n one to supervise. Ho ho ho.
120size acrobatics plane. Big is good, visible from far
R90 setting up
R90 test fly
Tuning the walkera
WY's heli repaired with new pipe
Check out the new Align 6amp regulator. It got a built in switch, nice.
WY test fly
Some serious discussion going on.
Another big plane.
Stand-by heli!