RockinTheCasbah

iTrader: (7)

I recently bought one of these to put in my son's nitro buggy, after I broke it in , in my car I left it in , holds it's own against the Nova, reds, os etc , has a lot of bottom end and holds an idle well I really have no compliants, looks like you can still get parts though alturn.

frewster

iTrader: (1)

You have to be careful. Some of the newer ones are Alphas since they ran out of the Go engines and Go went under back in 2015.

RockinTheCasbah

iTrader: (7)

Good to know, I haven't had this one apart yet

bomboms

did you manage to get this apart? are they now alpha based?

frewster

iTrader: (1)

Mine was.

cbh148

Just to add to the thread:

I bought one of these in July 2020, then less than a month later, I blew it up with barely more than 1 quart on it due to not running a rubber band fail safe and having my Tx battery die. Revved out and slung a rod, and before the broken parts had cooled off, I got on my phone and ordered another Lol

Got #2 in August 2020, and over the past several months, here's some differences I've noticed and some other tidbits that may or may not be of any use to anybody:

- #2 came in an actual box, unlike #1 which just came in an envelope.
- #2 cooling head anodizing is slightly lighter in color, but not enough to make me think it was deliberately different.
- Carb slides are different. #1 throttle ball link has tick marks around the LSN screw, but #2 doesn't. Tried putting #1 throttle linkage on #2 but it won't fit because the actual slides are different shaped (different color too).
- #1 slide has a long style needle and #2 slide has a short style needle.
- Porting seems slightly different. Didn't look for too long but I think I saw some slight differences at least in the sides of the big exhaust port.
- Crankcase machining is different around where the head seats onto it, outside of the head screws. One of them is machined nearly to the outside edge of the crankcase fin. The other has a much smaller diameter to that machined face, bringing its edge closer to the head screw holes. The unmachined area does not appear to interfere with the head seating fully down to the sleeve flange.

With the #2 engine, I kept having issues with the revs hanging up high after getting on the throttle heavily from corner exit then letting off. It was most noticeable when hitting jumps, but if I let off halfway down a straight section it would do it on the ground too. I kept trying to tune it out but always ran into extreme compromises in the tune that still didn't stop the rev hang. I don't recall if #1 also behaved like this because I barely got to drive it before it was grenaded, but I think it may have because I swapped the carb slide from #1 into #2's carb to get the long needle and it still behaved the same way. No air leaks anywhere. Then I swapped on an old Novarossi Bonito 2 needle carb and the rev-hanging-during-jumps issue completely went away.

I was told by someone that they swapped in a Novarossi P5 crank into their Trackstar SEG .21 with great success, claiming better run time and I think better power too. Something to do with the crank window timing I suppose. Coincidentally, I have a spare P5 crank laying around that, as far as I can recall, shouldn't have any damage. Might try it out to see for myself.

Mine makes ok power with a 41021 Nova manifold, 9901 Nova pipe, running Bones Brew 30%/10%.. Haven't tried any other exhaust setups. At 1 gallon, with strictly preheating to 200F before every start, I would expect the engine to have more mechanical pinch than what it does (which isn't much at all), but the pneumatic compression seems fair. Idles ok but the current tune loads up quick so I'm always bumping the throttle trying to mitigate it. Haven't dialed in the Nova carb settings since I've only had 1 track day with it.

frewster

iTrader: (1)

Can you post pictures of the two engines?

cbh148

I can. That might be the motivation to get me to take the time to remove the engine, break it down to get pics for comparison, then reassembling with the Nova P5 crank.

frewster

iTrader: (1)

I'd like to see them because I have both the older Go TrackStar and the newer Alpha TrackStar. The Alpha carb has tick marks in the LSN housing.

cbh148

Alright, so I got all the Turnigy/Trackstar parts arranged back how they came to me as far as which slide, went to which carb/block/etc. Of course, disregard the Nova carb that's still mounted on engine #2. Found a few more differences, and I'm curious to know what they correlate with as I have zero experience/knowledge on Alpha and Go branded engines.










- #1 sleeve has fangs, #2 does not.
- #1 piston has holes in skirt, #2 does not.
- #1 slide is not magnetic, #2 is.

Also, I removed the clutch off #2 and the crank just falls out of the bearings. The outside face of the front bearing was loaded with dirt, perhaps excessively leaking. Think I will swap in the used P5 bearings with the P5 crank since they have the correct interference fit to one another and presumably are nicer quality.

frewster

iTrader: (1)

#1 is Alpha and #2 is Go. I got many gallons out of my TrackStar Go and won several raced with it. My TrackStar Alpha had only seen a little bit of use and still needs to be properly tuned.

As for the hanging high, you may be running too large of an idle gap and too rich on the low end. The idle gap shouldn't be more than 1mm. I never had that issue on my TrackStar Go.

cbh148

Interesting. Wonder if they transitioned over from one brand to the other and, at the time that I ordered these a year ago, it was still in the stage of inventory being mixed between the two brands? Or perhaps that stage hasn't ended yet, so some people today are still receiving the TrackStar Alpha? Does one have any real advantage over the other? I assume it's pretty negligible but maybe the Alpha's fangs and piston skirt holes bump it up ever so slightly. Should the cranks be identical between the 2 versions?

In any case, I've liked mine so far. The idle gap was set down to .5-.6mm when I was using the stock carbs, so I'm not sure what was happening there with the rev hanging behavior, but fortunately the Nova carb seems to have that squashed. Makes me wonder if there will be a perceivable difference with the Nova P5 crank, as it does have a pretty different window shape to it.

frewster

iTrader: (1)

Go went out of business around 2015 and HobbyKing was selling through their stock of Go engines for quite some time. They probably still have some. Alpha replaced them and HobbyKing never bothered to tell anyone about the change.

cbh148

Gotcha. Appreciate the explanation man.

Nova P5 crank is in. Ended up having to reuse the TrackStar rear bearing as it is 25mm OD vs. the P5's 26mm OD bearing, but the low hour made-in-Japan front bearing dropped right in.
.

Gotmehyper

cbh148
"I was told by someone that they swapped in a Novarossi P5 crank into their Trackstar SEG .21 with great success, claiming better run time and I think better power too. Something to do with the crank window timing I suppose. Coincidentally, I have a spare P5 crank laying around that, as far as I can recall, shouldn't have any damage. Might try it out to see for myself.

Mine makes ok power with a 41021 Nova manifold, 9901 Nova pipe, running Bones Brew 30%/10%.. Haven't tried any other exhaust setups. At 1 gallon, with strictly preheating to 200F before every start, I would expect the engine to have more mechanical pinch than what it does (which isn't much at all), but the pneumatic compression seems fair. Idles ok but the current tune loads up quick so I'm always bumping the throttle trying to mitigate it. Haven't dialed in the Nova carb settings since I've only had 1 track day with it."

That would be me. I put a P5 crank in my Alpha SEG .21 and it works well. I can't claim better mileage but it did Idle better and pulled harder. Top seemed a tad better too.
I added a ceramic rear bearing and NR cooling head and an Alpha Dragon backplate (has the holes drilled in it)running NR 41019 manifold and NR 9886 pipe 30%10% Bonesbrew in a RC8 with stock gearing. I also ran it in my NB48.4 with same exhaust and stock gearing. Runs exceptionally good for the price.