Originally Posted by
Roelof
Through the years the quality of Picco has it ups and downs.
My 1st Picco (based) engine was the Mega P5, A good engine but sadly a very bad carburator.
After some bad things with Novarossi I decided to get a Picco, a G1-Pro. A very good and fast engine but the rod broke in the 1st race after running in. Did place a new P/S set and the sleeve broke in 2 halfs. After a deny of the distrinuter yo arrange some warranty I decided not to buy a Picco annymore.
But a few years ago the sponsor wanted to see one and bought a Mega ZX21, after running in all compression and power was gone....
I know Novarossi also has it ups and downs but not as bad with Picco's.
I think you've made the most informative post about engines that I have ever seen here and I see it at the track every week.
Nova fails, they go Max, Max fails they go Sirio, Sirio fails they go Picco, Picco fails they go back to Nova and the cycle starts over and the racer is unhappy and believes the engine is fully at fault (and sometimes is) but each manufacturer has released a new 100% better engine by the time they get back to them.
The evo4 is an improvement on the evo3 for durability, the rod lasts twice as long in my experience and I haven't broken one yet but you can actually feel when it's getting loose unlike the evo3 but I changed rods every gallon "just to be sure" but at a cost of around $20 retail on the 3, is it that expensive? I know some of you run engines for 30 gallons, I don't.
One thing I haven't kept track of in my years of racing until recently was the fuel we use, every one of us has a local fuel guy that mixes some great stuff. Then you have the production fuels like Byrons and Nitrotane among others. I have seen problems with the home stuff and the production stuff depending on the batch and chinas supply of nitro. Just recently I had a case of Byrons 25%/12% oil and I had to add a cap or two of oil to get the proper burn that left the top of the piston with a slightly wet look and the crank wet after running. I burned a piston/sleeve assuming that the 12% oil label on the bottle was correct and ran too much before consulting an expert when my power dropped off on my .21. We popped the head and sure enough, there was not enough oil which caused excessive wear. Take a sharpie and try to mark the rod right after you run, if it writes easily then you don't have enough oil and 9 times out of 10 the engines I have seen lately fail have all had a lack of oil where something seizes causing the rod to break.