Vintage Mardave - Veco 21 Engine

RPB82 Thu Jan 16, 2014 6:41 am

Hi all I was wondering if I could tap into your collective knowledge to help me.
I was talking with a colleague and he mentioned he had a very old RC car which had been sat still for the best part of 30 years and asked would I like it. I accepted and received a vintage Mardave RC car featuring an old Veco 21 engine.
When I received the car it was caped in grease and dirt and the engine was solid but I’ve spend a bit of time disassembling and cleaning things up and it’s now looking pretty good and turns smoothly.
So now I’m looking for an appropriate glow plug and fuel type to try and get the engine running. I’m 31 myself and my previous experiences with RC cars is from being a youngster running a Tamiya TGX Mk1 with and OPS 18 engine if I remember correctly.
I’ll assume these two engines are very different beasts and that if I was to chuck any old glow plug and fuel into it I may ruin the engine, which I really don’t want.
Any help, guidance or advice would be much appreciated.
Thanks RPB82

**RknRusty** Thu Jan 16, 2014 10:20 am

Hi RPB, Welcome to CEF.
We've got a few avid car guys here, and even more eclectic engine lovers, so hopefully by later today you should have some good answers.

Rusty

Surfer_kris Thu Jan 16, 2014 11:54 am

The glow plug is not so critical, in principle, but the older engines with cross-scavenging work better with a glow plug that has an idle bar. The length of the plug is important though, you don't want the plug to reach too far down into the cylinder. Simply counting the threads in the head is usually enough. The long reach ones have about 5 full threads while the short reach ones are close to 3. OS and Enya are medium reach with about 4 threads.

The fuel is very important though, you don't want to put modern car fuel in these engines. Instead you should use 20-25% all castor oil the fuel.

Jason_WI Thu Jan 16, 2014 1:02 pm

+1 on using an all castor based fuel in that old Veco. SIG has all castor fuel but must be purchased in gallons.

I have a Veco 19 car engine. The only difference I could find with the aero version is the head fins are rotated 90 degrees to allow better cooling.

RPB82 Fri Jan 17, 2014 6:06 am

Thanks for the info guys,

So if I simply mix modern glow fuel with the castor oild (in the right preportions) that should do the trick? Hopefully I can get her running pretty soon and then I'll be looking to rebuiding the car its self (needs a few replacment parts and new radio equipment). If anyone would be interested I could post a few before and after shots once I've got it up to scrstch.

Untill id started this little project I'd almost frogot how much I enjoy having a tinker.

Thanks again.

ekitten2 Thu Jan 23, 2014 5:28 am

pics are always good

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