Teledyne 4A032 Engine

Greetings all. I have recently come across a Teledyne Continental 4A032 engine that I think may be a good fit for a Q1. Does anyone have any experience with this engine or any thoughts? There is a Yahoo group dedicated to the engine at groups.yahoo.com/group/4A032/messages but so far I haven't found any actual aircraft applications. There is a guy that is looking to put one into a Moni motroglider that he will call a Mosi mosimotorglider.blogspot.com/ but I haven't found much else. Have a great day - Ken

65lb dry and 20hp? Sounds perfect!! The price is right too. I want one!!!

www.ultralightnews.com/airventure2001/teledyne1.htm

Rob

From the 4A032 Yahoo group:

The issue of hotting up the 4AO34 have been described quite a bit on this site.

You would benefit very much from just going back in time on this blog and read through everything about it.

About all the conventional tricks in the book have already been made.

When it comes to the 4AO32 as an airplane engine, you need to consider the engines weaknesses, and possible remedies.

One Q1(Quickie) have tried to fly with this engine, this was a completely standard 4AO32 engine, and there was only power enough to get the aircraft into groundeffect, and it mushed back, never really to take off.

A Windwagon got as high as 150 feet, before it stalled, and was completely destroyed.

That engine was known to have been "pepped up" a bit.

There have been some websites with pictures of this engine in different aircraft, but no known sustained flight have been reported.

It has even been seen on some airshows, with a propeller on it.

Porting, higher compression, and a better carb will probably get this engine up to about 14-16 HP ( 16 if you're lucky).

You need to get 20 or so, hp out of it, before you at least will have power for flight, still marginal but it will get you up.

To get 20 HP out of this engine, is hard, it has been done, but it now require another camshaft. Something that has to be grinded by a camshaft grinder, using the original cam, as the core.

If you get up to 20 HP, you now have to consider a lot of other things regarding this engine.

The rodends are splash oiled, the rodends itself have very small diameter, that makes the whole crankshaft very "flexy", and you now have to figure out how to mount a thrust bearing between the engine house and the prop.

The valves are extremely small, and will not easily lend itself to a good cycle of.... "in with the good air, and out with the bad air".

The wristpins on the pistons are very dinky.

You only have 32 cu inch, a touch over a half liter.

The engine is, as you can see a challenge to make it work in an aircraft, it looks like an aircraft engine, but it is far from it.

Your chances of flying are (if you are able to work yourself succesfully through all the High Performance fixings this engine requires) probably better than the candidates that have been trying so far, because your choice of aircraft is one of the better choices.

Remeber I mentioned that a Windwagon had done an effort already, well the Hummelbird is a further development of the Windwagon , and the Hummelbird Ultracruiser is basically the same aircraft, except it is an UL, therefore it has so much slower stall, and so much more wing area.

If you want to be the first to fly with this engine, ( a challenge in itself) you need to study up on this engine on this blog. There is a lot of technical discussions on this blogs timetrack.

Get into your comfy chair, put your slippers on, and have yourself a hot Chocolate, lock the door and unplug the phone and start reading up.

Start experimenting with your engine, put it on a stand, and hang a prop on it. You can use that as your home dyno.

Make that whole gizmo pull or push a scale. (Nowadays digital bathrooms scales are actually pretty exact), and when the (now tuned) engine is running and pulling for all what it is worth, you should have a pull ( or push) on the scale of around 85-95 pounds.

Thats roughly where you will find 20 HP when you spin a prop in air.

To add another datum, if you're going direct drive ( with this engine almost a must, because of splash oiling of the rodends*** read more about it in past blogs***) , your prop stall speed should be in the vicinity of 3000 RPM.

Ok, so when you have 85-95 pounds on the scale, at the same time as the prop have stalled the engine at 3000 RPM, you now are....... where you want to be.

Good luck.

And the final word, from developer David Vogel himself (via email):

"Forget it. Quit years ago as too little power."

Rob