Chinese 4 stroke model camshaft repair advice

[L98fiero]

As a communist would ask the buyer: What are you going to use high quality steel for?

Maybe not everyone can buy high quality materials without permits in China.

Maybe not everyone can buy high quality materials without permits in China but considering the number of tool and die shops exporting and the size of their manufacturing sector in general, I seriously doubt it, besides, all they'd need would be a medium to high carbon steel, nothing particularly special.

There is though the thing about what people are willing to pay for the end product. As Bazzer pointed out, the Chinese can make anything they desire to the highest standards but are you wiling to pay for that quality. The engines are probably built to a price point just like what you'd buy at Walmart.

 

[M16mdl]

Maybe not everyone can buy high quality materials without permits in China but considering the number of tool and die shops exporting and the size of their manufacturing sector in general, I seriously doubt it, besides, all they'd need would be a medium to high carbon steel, nothing particularly special.

There is though the thing about what people are willing to pay for the end product. As Bazzer pointed out, the Chinese can make anything they desire to the highest standards but are you wiling to pay for that quality. The engines are probably built to a price point just like what you'd buy at Walmart.

255$ with a coupon M16 1.6cc Mini 4 Stroke Gasoline Engine Model Vertical Air-cooled Single-cylinder Engine with Wooden Base

 

[Mechanicboy]

Maybe not everyone can buy high quality materials without permits in China but considering the number of tool and die shops exporting and the size of their manufacturing sector in general, I seriously doubt it, besides, all they'd need would be a medium to high carbon steel, nothing particularly special.

There is though the thing about what people are willing to pay for the end product. As Bazzer pointed out, the Chinese can make anything they desire to the highest standards but are you wiling to pay for that quality. The engines are probably built to a price point just like what you'd buy at Walmart.

$300 It is a lot of money to produce an engine with cheap materials that do not keep the quality. The Chinese are one step ahead of buyers who buy an engine as they did not expect it to be a short-lived joy for buyers so the Chinese expect to sell even more engine at a good profit.

And in addition, it is the wrong construction that causes it to wear down quickly.

 

[M16mdl]

$300 It is a lot of money to produce an engine with cheap materials that do not keep the quality. The Chinese are one step ahead of buyers who buy an engine as they did not expect it to be a short-lived joy for buyers so the Chinese expect to sell even more engine at a good profit.

Regardless, it’s a fun engine. It’s a simple easy to work on thing. When it’s well tuned it always starts up real easy. Just takes a bit of fine tuning. And I’ll get that New camshaft to fix the issue

 

[Mechanicboy]

And I’ll get that New camshaft to fix the issue

See in the post #16 to improve against to wear out the camshaft.

 

[M16mdl]

I can't understand why the cam shaft was not made of hard steel to example drill rod/silver steel. Bad selected steel as material for cam shaft who are too soft to resist wear from valve lifter. And there is not rotating valve lifter affected by cam shaft to resist wear, also the centerline of the lifters are offset slightly with respect to the cam lobes. This makes the lifters rotate as the cam turns, which helps to reduce friction and wear.

Better to make a new cam shaft of drill rod/silver steel and all surfaces (both cam lobe and valve lifters) polished to resist wear and make the lifters offset to rotate the lifters

View attachment 130057 .
View attachment 130059

Believe it or not the original lifters do rotate when running. I had it apart and they do rotate around. Guess even that wasn’t enough to fix the wear LOL

 

[Mousetrap]

A warning to every one, don't waste your money on any Chinese made products, the quality of my Chinese made lathe and milling machine is very poor and I am no orphan, many people have a pile of Chinese garbage in their back yard. It is sad.

 

[willray]

As Bazzer pointed out, the Chinese can make anything they desire to the highest standards...

I see/hear people say this with some regularity, but I've yet to see the evidence of this myself.

It's certainly possible that they can, but are there any circumstances under which they would choose to? I'm not so sure. Certainly in consumer goods, it's not a matter of "are you willing to pay them to make it good", it's a matter of "why would we bother to make it good, if the buyers are willing to pay well for crap". This attitude doesn't seem to stop at consumer goods.

I have (professionally) some rather expensive equipment sourced from China. While there are certainly tiers above mine, we're talking about $quarter-million bracket biomedical research equipment. It's just as much a polished turd as the junk you buy from Harbor Freight.

Vastly more effort invested in making it look like it's good, than invested in making it good, and an almost belligerent avoidance of care to details that "don't matter". Behind the polished face-plates, these machines is as unlike what you'd see if you looked under the hood of a Deckel, Kearney & Trecker, Myford, etc, as you can possibly get.

I find it hard to imagine that this mindset of "screw the buyer" doesn't infect Chinese manufacturing at every level.

 

[MrMetric]

Sometimes it is in the QA cycle too. Years ago, a large router company that starts with 'C' and sounds like Fricso was making high end routers in China in a factory (well, probably still do because they never learned a lesson from the following experience). They started getting a bunch of service requests for serial numbers that they couldn't figure out, but the boards looked really good. Eventually they figured out the problem. The factory was running a 12 hour shift. During the day, authentic routers were being made. After everyone left, a "new" shift came on that made counterfeit routers on the same line (obviously unbeknownst to the product owner). Same exact line and yet the quality suffered considerably. As everything in China is ultimately owned by the government, I seriously doubt anyone got into *real* trouble over the whole thing. The point is... Same exact line, completely different failure rates.... Quality is about reviewing the finished product too.

 

[scottyp]

So then we should expect to see counterfeits of these little engines available soon at half the price. Serious but not serious.
I was surprised and amazed to see that the kerz hit n miss and the up vertical single ( and probably several others) were among the selections.

 

[M16mdl]

So then we should expect to see counterfeits of these little engines available soon at half the price. Serious but not serious.
I was surprised and amazed to see that the kerz hit n miss and the up vertical single ( and probably several others) were among the selections.

The Chinese hit and miss’s are really good. Because the design is off of the kertzal engines. These things can get people in the hobby for cheap and that’s what I love to much about them.

They have sent me a new camshaft and will arrive eventually. However I will not be installing it.

 

[stevehuckss396]

This may end the hobby going forward. Most or all of those plan sets were released to the public so guy's could build them in there garage. They were never intended for commercial use. Now going forward if somebody designs an engine he may choose to keep the plans private rather than have them fall into the hands of people who do work like you see in this thread. I know I wont if I ever do it again. I would be pretty pissed off if it were my designs being used as a commercial endevor.

 

[MrMetric]

Steve.... I think you may be onto something. There are many ways to kill ourselves... Here is an example: The growth of useless process patents are killing industry in America, IMHO. When Amazon can patent the 'buy it now' button, that is just stupid. People don't use patents to protect a product they are producing anymore. Instead, they patent everything under the sun and then wait for an ability to sue someone. IBM is notorious for this. And nothing is ever released. Three of our largest companies never would have started in today's world. Microsoft effectively stole MSDOS from Digital Research (and then paid a paltry royalty), Apple was owned by HP by virtue of the fact that Jobs used HP lab assets and parts to build the original Apple (HP decided not to get into the business so they released him), and Warnock/Geshke developed PostScript as employees of Xerox PARC (who also decided not to produce the product, so they gave it to them); this was how Adobe started. Now, companies will never release anything because it is "ammunition in case we want to sue someone".... It is killing us.

I do have to say, however, that I do find it somewhat interesting that you have the perspective you do, though. If I'm not mistaken, all of your designs are retained as private (this is NOT a criticism or a dig, by the way). I am hoping that when you decide to exit the hobby, you will release those designs to the public. One of the truly sad things that I see over and over here on HMEM is people wanting to copy something where the owner died years ago. Yes, I understand copyrights. And I don't have a problem with that. I also find it sad, however, when clearly the plans are flapping in the wind and will never be pursued. I think it is generally a pipe dream that the legitimate owner will ever pursue the sale of the plans/parts/etc, if they even *know* they are the legitimate owner. In a way, I think this is killing the hobby too. It may be *legal* but we can legislate ourselves to death too. HMEM is a dying breed, unfortunately. I'm probably on the younger side of the group here and I'm no spring chicken.

In the end, I would encourage all of the copyright owners that have decided they no longer want to pursue the commercial rights of their designs to release them to the public domain so that we may all benefit. The work you have all done is greatly appreciated and the legacy of that work can be enjoyed by all. Yes, this is an impassioned plea.

In the end, software has pioneered the concept of open source licensing which limits comercialization. Hopefully engine designs can be the same.... That said, it *does* require a certain adherence of those views to work. China is not noted (at all) for respecting intellectual property, so I can easily see them commercializing a public domain item in full knowledge that it is in violation. The best that can be done there is that Customs confiscates and destroys the items on import... But that is tenuous, I agree.

 

[djswain1]

Another way of looking at it is that a commercially produced engine based on plans in the public domain is an affirmation of the design and plans. The availability of these assembled models means that the finished engine is available to a larger audience who may not have the equipment/time/knowledge etc required to build one from plans. In turn it is likely that a percentage of purchasers will start to tinker with their engines and in the process find their way into the the model engineering hobby.
I'm not condoning the way the Chinese do this sort of thing but trying to look on the brightside of it.
Cheers, Dave

 

[littlelocos]

Another way of looking at it is that a commercially produced engine based on plans in the public domain is an affirmation of the design and plans.

Dave, The problem is that neither the Kerzel or the Upshur designs were in the public domain. The Kerzel plans were explicitely released for non-commercial use and the Chinese violated that. Dave has addressed this previously.
Todd.

 

[littlelocos]

This may end the hobby going forward. Most or all of those plan sets were released to the public so guy's could build them in there garage. They were never intended for commercial use. Now going forward if somebody designs an engine he may choose to keep the plans private rather than have them fall into the hands of people who do work like you see in this thread. I know I wont if I ever do it again. I would be pretty pissed off if it were my designs being used as a commercial endevor.

Steve,
I agree wholeheartedly. As someone who is in the business of supporting this hobby, I've worried about this for years. As long as folks aren't worried about where their stuff comes from the cheap knock-offs from the Near and Far East will continue to be popular. Even for those of us that are in the business, like I am, there are little to no protections. I've blocked countries from purchasing our items on eBay, but still realize that there are companies in the US that will purchase items for them.
Thanks for speaking up,
Todd.

 

[L98fiero]

This may end the hobby going forward. Most or all of those plan sets were released to the public so guy's could build them in there garage. They were never intended for commercial use. Now going forward if somebody designs an engine he may choose to keep the plans private rather than have them fall into the hands of people who do work like you see in this thread. I know I wont if I ever do it again. I would be pretty pissed off if it were my designs being used as a commercial endevor.

FWIW, as disappointing as it is, I don't think you can stop it. I've seen products in this hobby as well as others where the designer would not sell the plans or the product into China, getting around that is as simple as someone ordering a set of plans or the item in the country you are from and shipping it to China, India or wherever. Frankly, it happens in industry too, design something, even patent it, and unless you have the millions required to defend even a patent, it will be stolen but then, that's capitalism, even in China and no, some of the larger ones are but most companies in China aren't owned by the government.

 

[GreenTwin]

This may end the hobby going forward. Most or all of those plan sets were released to the public so guy's could build them in there garage. They were never intended for commercial use. Now going forward if somebody designs an engine he may choose to keep the plans private rather than have them fall into the hands of people who do work like you see in this thread. I know I wont if I ever do it again. I would be pretty pissed off if it were my designs being used as a commercial endevor.

I have been publishing many of my drawings/designs as I get them complete, and have a note on the drawings that they are copyrighted, and for personal non-commercial use only.
Obviously people around the world will do whatever with any plans that they find.
One has to decide whether to release plans or not.

I don't like people using my designs for commercial use, but having the designs vanish into obscurity is less appealing.
I have redrawn some of my dad's designs in CAD, and published those in open-source (free) format.
Had I not gotten access to my dad's engine drawings after his death, those designs would have vanished forever.

Most of the Bernays that can be seen on GrabCad used my drawings, that were derived from my dad's drawings.
My dad's No.21 can also be found on GrabCad.
I must say it is cool to see one's drawings morphed into 3D objects, and appearing on the web.
My intent is to advance the hobby in any way I can, and perhaps raise it to new levels that have never been seen before.

The world has become a very strange place of late.
I am still plan on publishing drawings for everything I build, and posting them for free in open-source non-commercial places around the web.
I posted full drawings for the green twin (the one in my avatar) in the magazine where it was published.
I suspect copies may show up one day for sale; nothing I can do about it; I am still going to build engines and post drawings for them regardless.

It is what it is.

.

 

[stevehuckss396]

Did that camshaft ever get fixed? Sorry guys but we have completely gone off the rails in this thread. As to not further tread on the subject I'm making this my last post. My apologies to M16mdl.

 

[MrMetric]

To be clear, and admire, a person's desire and ability to design an engine and then make a small business out of supplying either plans or kits. It is that transition from hobby to business, and more than one large entity has come from that. I doubt any significant business will come about from model motors, but it doesn't really matter. In the end, it can just be hobby income and it is still a protected right.

I also applaud you greentwin (and others) for making your plans public if you have no intention of marketing them. I guess there are really only two choices. Knowing that China is devoid of business ethics, when you release a set of plans publicly you do so with the knowledge that you very well could see commercialization from China of your work. Frankly, even if you *sell* the plans/kits, as Todd has eluded to with his eBay sales restrictions, you run that risk. The other choice is that you keep everything you've ever done close to the chest and never let anyone know about it. Honestly, I think we all benefit from one another, and I hope that the choice is to release things when you are "done with them." Stipulate it in your will, if you want, so that your heirs will know. We will all thank you for the contribution. And, we will put to rest the extensive comments about the copyright conundrum.

Steve/Todd... I hope you haven't interpreted my comments as condoning illicit copying of your plans as you are actively marketing them. And, yes, legally you have the right to restrict even after you cease marketing them. I just hope that you'll not go down that route unless you are selling the businesses to someone else that will sell them, etc. I *am* in your corner, and I have long looked at both your products. I come close to pulling the trigger frequently, but haven't done so yet. I will eventually....

Back to you GreenTwin... Yes, it can be fun to see morphing of something after it has been released. In the software world one need only look at Linux as a prime example of what *can* happen in the public domain. We all benefit from Torvald's actions, and I *know* Linux has progressed far far beyond what he originally had. If I were he, I'd be thrilled to see what it has become. And if you don't think we have benefited from his actions, consider this... There is a *very* good chance that the servers being used to host HMEM are running Linux.

On edit: (posted while Steve was adding his own comments).... yes, I think I shall stop too. it really is a disservice to the original poster to have hijacked his thread. To him, I extend my apologies.... I also extend a suggestion... It is great that you are enamored with how the engine works. You are learning something and that is what life is about.... I would like to encourage you to consider getting a set of plans and try your hand building something. You may fall in love with the hobby. There are a myriad of books, free plans, or paid content such as by some of the vendors that have posted even in this thread. All are wonderful resources. So.... Join on in! We welcome all new members to the hobby!