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Modern Quickie engine


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A long term goal of mine is to build a Quickie. With an engineering/aerospace background I hope to modernize a few aspects of the design and build process.

One of these is to use a more modern powerplant. An idea has come to mind to use Briggs & Stratton's (vanguard) range of electronic fuel injected, electric start engines. https://www.vanguardpower.com/na/en_us/product-catalog/engines/small-block-vtwin-horizontal-shaft/vanguard--230-gross-hp-efi-etc.html

With what seems like adequate RPM, HP and weight values, it seems like a fairly ideal engine choice.

Briggs & Stratton are known for their reliability. An aircraft application will also be a lot kinder.

Of course it would have to be verified to have no oil problems at excessive tilt.

Curious to whether anyone has used one of these before or any general opinions.

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Peak power is at 3600RPM, which may be a bit quick? And you'll probably need something to support prop loads anyway, so can you find a PSRU for it?

Aerocanard (modified) SN:ACPB-0226 (Chapter 8)

Canardspeed.com (my build log and more; usually lags behind actual progress)
Flight simulator (X-plane) flight model master: X-Aerodynamics

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1 hour ago, thseng said:

That doesn't look to hard to build but I wonder about the stress on the crankshaft and crankshaft bore which were probably only designed for centered, rotating loads.  Maybe there is enough case thickness to accept an external bearing or to build the case up with welds to add an external bearing to take the loads.  I am thinking of Corvair aero engines that have added external bearings to resist prop gyroscopic loads.  Google William Wynne Corvair

Yah know, there are guys on youtube who demonstrate aluminum casting.  Maybe one could cast a new aluminum case using the original case with a boss as a mold, to accept an external bearing.  Fun to think about.

-Kent
Cozy IV N13AM-750 hrs, Long-EZ-85 hrs and sold

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These engines are very similar to the engines they use on their ride-on lawn mowers. If that is the case, I would expect the crankshaft and bearings to be fairly robust. Side loading of belt drives or direct drive onto the mower blades in some cases. The ultralight conversion looks really neat!

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  • 3 months later...

Ben, 

There has been a fair amount of development of the industrial V twins, 600-800cc for aircraft use. The Columban MC-30 Luciole flies one as does the SD1. The person I have been following on this is Thomas at https://tipis-ul-engines.mystrikingly.com. He is pursuing a vertical shaft (Zero Turn Radius) mower engine of 800cc converted to horizontal shaft and inverted cylinders and heads. The belt drive that seems most available is from India, though it lacks some engineering calculations that one might wish to have. Keep us posted! I wish you the best of luck.

 

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I was about to post about Leonard's work also.   

I don't know if this is why we put his own carburetors on, but the Vanguard engine looks to have electronic fuel injection from the factory.  While great from a carb ice and mixture control point of view, there would be some reliability concern.  I downloaded the service manual and while very thorough, the entire thing is about troubleshooting error codes from the ECU - nothing mechanical at all...

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