So I have a general question about buggies and nitro engines, but I own an Eight X, so I thought it would be best to post here. I am currently about to purchase a new engine, and I am torn. What my question is, is you always see Reds engines in the TLR pictures of their buggies. The Corsa Lunga model, usually. Those things have 3.5 horsepower, according to official distributors, in a .21 engine! And all the other brands like Picco, O.S, and the like, typically only put out between 2.5-2.7 horsepower. So what’s the deal here? Is an engine that puts out 3.5 hp practical for a buggy? And why are all the other brands so much lower in horsepower, if that’s not the preferred amount?? I ask this, because I only buy a new engine, once every couple of years, so I wanna get the best that I can right now, and price tag isn’t necessarily a concern for me. I wanted to post this and hopefully get some opinions/answers on this topic from you all. Because I’ve always heard that when choosing an engine, you want to go with more horsepower than torque in an engine, because you can always gear for torque, but there is no way of “gearing” more horsepower. Horsepower is not “gearable”. So what is everyone’s thought on this? Will a Reds Corsa Lunga be super legit in an Eight X buggy, or is that just overkill? Because I am definitely leaning towards the Reds, but again, don’t know what the deal is with such the drastic difference in horsepower from other typical mills you see in nitro buggies. Again, just looking for some thoughts/opinions/advice on this conundrum before I pull the trigger. Thanks for all your input in advance!!

Chad

your asking a very political question. You will get people who love reds and some that will say they suck. I personally am on the negative side of that answer as I’ve had terrible luck tuning picco based engines and I’ve had a few. I’ve read a lot of people say tuning these days are much better but I still see people say they are among the more difficult to tune and I believe that and would steer clear of an engine that takes a very expert tuning finger. You sound like your still getting the ropes of things and a lot of people will agree when I say get an O.S. Especially if you can afford it, they tune very very easy and usually don’t require a ton of tuning and they have incredible track records (especially if they have a dlc coated crank) and they have a lot of very high quality drivers. I don’t want to talk about what happened at the worlds with reds and os but let’s just say there top driver put a reds head on an o.s. Engine and that driver was having trouble with the reds and wasn’t willing to risk another worlds flame out so he used the very very solid performing o.s. And he almost won with it and had one of the best engines on track.

to be honest, brotha, that’s what I have heard the most, negatively speaking about Reds, was the difficulty in tuning. So thank you, it sounds like this is across the board opinion wise. You may have swayed me back to an O.S. So let me ask, which OS would you believe is the absolute best for a buggy? I’ve heard the Speed V2, but I don’t know if that’s still the case. Any suggestions on what is considered the “best, fastest” engine for a buggy?

That thing looks sick! Like it! Is the heat sink low profile on that engine? Or the same high profile sink?

I’ve been thinking about giving this new engine a try, there’s only one thing I don’t understand about reds, they are top shelf engines and not cheap, almost every reds engine I’ve seen the red anodizing on the head looks pink and faded in a short amount of time, wish they would change that, I’m having a tough time spending $500+ on a engine pipe combo that’s gonna look very old once that red starts fading