Originally Posted by BrettL

Go to the track you plan to race on. Most tracks you'll find have one engine brand that's more common than others. At ours, it's the Alpha brand. Good engines. I'm old school, so when I was first told that you needed to replace the connecting rod after break-in, I thought it was ridiculous. I still do. But, I guess is the norm with high performance, high pinch, engines. You'll need a heat gun or engine pre-heater(good investment) to heat a new engine up enough to turn it over with minimal, initial stress to the engine. Many racers are using these pre-heaters after break-in as well. Look on the nitro engine forum at the top of this page, lot of great information there.