Originally Posted by
jwm2
Yes but what defines good smoke? I know when running rich the smoke is alot thicker than when running lean, but even when running lean the smoke is still visable. It would be nice to have a guideline on the smoke other than just experience. I know you can't measure the smoke but maybe a video or 2 of a good race tune would clear things up. I've had 6 different nitro rcs over the course of the last 10 years and still wonder at times how much smoke is enough and how much is too much. I always tune for performance, but like to make sure some smoke is present throughout the power band.
Well thats a tricky one. Tuning these little buggers is a bit of a dark art. Oil type and content in different fuels varies a lot, so there are no hard and fast rules on what constitutes "a good amount of smoke". I guess it does really come down to experiance, and knowing what your exhaust trail should look like with a good tune top and bottom for your set up.
You can normally tell a rich tune by the blubbery sound as well as the abundance of smoke. A top end that is too lean (but not lean enough to cause a performance drop off) may still sound ok, but a lack of visible smoke (compared to what you would expect) is the give away.
Seems to me you just have to fine tune your senses of sight and sound over time to pick what's going on with your motor - unless someone else has a system they would like to share with us that covers all the variables.