Ben Murton

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!

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.