My ZDZ80

For those of you not at the field yesterday, I had the ZDZ 80cc in my Sukhoi break a crank mid-flight and grenade the front of the crankcase which departed complete with prop and took a considerable amount of finding once I'd handled the extremely tail heavy and difficult deadstick landing. The engine is a right off, I did have some spares from an old one but not enough to make an economical repair so I'm in the middle of transferring the engine from my Extra into the Sukhoi. If you ever see me doing a full throttle run up in the pits kick my rear because I would never ever want to be in front of one which let go like mine yesterday. As for the cause we'll probably never know, I did have a prop strike landing at the IMAC comp in Tholthorpe last season before I modded the gear to get more prop clearance, whether that started a stress fracture in the crank who knows? But it has done a lot of mileage since then. Perhaps it ingested Icelandic volcanic dust who knows. Lets be careful out there

The remains of the engine were certainly interesting! As I said, I wouldn't mind taking a look at the crank under a microscope

It might be worth reminding everyone to take care when performing engine tests on the ground, regardless on the size of the motor. Make doubly sure that no-one is in the line of fire etc. I personally have been rather slack in that respect....

Cheers
Andy

Blimeys Brian - lucky escape in more ways than one !
I have to say it does rather amaze me the amount of times I see people standing either in front of, or directly sideways on to a high revving motor in a model

Here's a grim piccy

How heavy is this front part ???

Heavy enough to make the landing extremely interesting when it naffed off with the prop

at least your extra will be quiet for a bit

Aye it's earned a rest the old Extra

incredible to think that happened in flight, dont think ive ever herd of this before.

M

WOW
was there much damage to the airframe?

A few cracks in the engine box and a little cowl damage plus spread the U/C slightly with the harrier landing, will be flying again today

Harrier landing?
That must have been cool to watch!

Not from my underpants it wasn't

Great news, I've received a phone call from Iain at IAD Models UK agents for ZDZ and they are offering to replace my engine subject to me returning the damaged one to them for inspection. I'm left gob-smacked by this offer as the engine was well out of warranty and it was never my intention to lay any sort of claim at ZDZ's door. A big thanks from me to ZDZ and Iain in this matter

thats good service and they deserve support

thats very good on their part!

Nice one, fingers crossed that they will replace it for you Brian after all it could easily have cost an airframe and more as well.

I would put in a claim for new underpants Brian...see if they have brown available

Right, final chapter on this, ZDZ are not replacing this, the factory say they will give me a 25% discount on a new one and Iain Nichol at IAD has said he would up that to 50%. Given that the engine was 6 years old and well out of warranty is not too shabby in either case.
It's left me feeling a little crestfallen as I had been led to believe the engine would be replaced and I shelled out £15 to get the old engine back to ZDZ in the Czech Republic. All that said I expected nothing in the first place, and at this moment I don't feel inclined to shell out £250+ to have an engine sitting in my spare airframe in the back of the trailer so I'll draw a line under it and move on

Have ZDZ given a reson for the failier?

M

Certainly not to me Mark

ask um for the engine back at there cost the cheekey buggers

Buy engine at 50% discount. Sell on ebay at 75% retail price. You make 25%. Buyer gets new engine for cheap. Everyone is happy. Apart from me, because I never did get to see that failure under the microscope.....

Andy