Posted by Bart_Banaan on 2007/12/4 10:03:31 (2988 reads )
The USE prototype engine of Roelof Tooms
As some of the readers have asked us about the new and relatively 'old looking' engine which Roelof is running, we can give you some more information about these prototypes. The brand of the engine is USE, which is a big name in small nitro engine history. The engines of the brand USE were in the late 70's and the early 80's the engine to have on your model airplane or scale boat. The brand even made history by winning titles such as 'European Champion' and 'World Champion' in severall airplane classes.
In the early 80's the Dutch company even introduced a car engine which was highly futuristic for that time because it had a lot of innovations which were not seen before. The company experimented with fully integrated liners, special cranckshafts, and more innovations never seen before (or afterwards!). After having reached several successes within the model racing world, the company discovered that the market for model engines was too small to build up a foundation for a healthy company, and they decided to stop further development. The project to build a new and innovative new engine was 'stowed in the closet' for years, but the company took care that they secured all data for future use.
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Today the Dutch company called J.H.P. Motorparts, owned by two technical engineers who are well known in the 1/1scale motorsport, have picked up the project out of the 'closet' and have started the development of the engine were it was left in the early 80's. With the modern knowlegde of materials, high-tech equipment and computer techniques they were able to start a new development round which is based on the results from the earlier days. Step by step they have worked on the development on the new USE 3,5cc engine, resulting in the attendence at the World Championship after only one-and-a-half year of re-development.
The engine has lots of innovative techniques inside, although you would not expect that when you look at the rather 'old fashioned' cranckcase. But this look has a reason; since the internals of the engine are really innovative, the outside is still the same as the last 'early' engine in the 80's. The internal measurements of the 'old fashion' crankcase is simular to the newest ones from other companies, and the priority of the engineers of J.H.P. Motorparts is concentrating on the internals of the engine and not on the looks!
The biggest innovations of this new USE engine are the use of exotic and high-tech materials, which make it possible to produce, amongst others, a fully integrated cilinder liner with cooling fins, an integrated combustion chamber, and a special lightweight crankshaft.
