One of my students who has over two thousand PPG flights, and flies the heck out of his Minari 180cc motor had a surprise in flight yesterday over the waters of the Long Island south shore. All ended well but not for the motor. After a nice one hour flight at about 1000’ AGL, he felt something strange with the engine when accelerating. The RPM were going up really quickly when throttling and the sound was not the same. He turned the motor OFF and glided back to his tiny post stamp-like LZ at the shoreline. Upon inspection after touchdown, he realized what had happened. We can only speculate but in light of what the motor looks like, the fracture crack was likely due to excessive vibrations after a few parts came loose and fell off. Washer, clips, propeller, the re-drive pulleys, etc… which are now at the bottom of the bay. He tried to at least find the carbon fiber propeller but no luck. A new engine block is needed. I hope for him that Minari will help.
Go electric!
Wow, haven’t seen that one before. I have a friend who flies a ton and with a Minari 200cc and most of his flying buddies also fly them now. From his experience the Minari to be more reliable than the vittorazi mosters that he has been flying for years. So maybe I’ll ask him if he has ever seen anything like this.
One more thing. I am not super familiar with the Minari engine, but entirely based off the deep blue coloring in the exhaust, the engine could be running very lean. As you may know 2 stroke exhaust gasses tends to be at nearly half the temperature of 4 stroke exhaust gasses. For this reason I have never seen a 2 stroke change the color of the pipe like that and it is a possible indicator that it is running very lean and very hot.
Inquired with Minari through the US distributor and hopefully they will be able to help.
He is a very good mechanic and thinking the have the engine block welded and reinforced. He still will have to buy a new prop and replace the hardware at the bottom of the bay.
Here he is with the Minari recently with an ITV Bi Bip18 new airport 15 plus winds 42421 - YouTube
What Minari answered to my friend plus his reaction: Minari said I overtightened the drive bolt. I have never touched it. All the other guys with same crack said Minari told them they dropped the motor during a hard landing, or some other cause is the reason it happened and is not Minari’s problem. I will never buy another Minari.
Of course they are just going to make all sorts of excuses – these(all ICE) are vibrating pieces of sh!t and unless you are Tucker or some other some other popular Ytbr with 5k+ subs that will give them too much bad publicity than your on your own. None of these ICE makers cant put a decent warranty behind their products because they know they cant make money that way.
Like you said “Go electric”…
Cheers
Even Tucker has now had an engine out - twice. Both times it was something he caused himself but it seems those bangblow-sucksqueeze (squeezebang-blowsuck?) machines require a lot of hands on. Now that I’m flying with 8 bonkas I’m not yearning for longer flights half as much.
It looks like Minari has reacted to my friend’s post which attracted near 90 responses rather quickly. When they saw the negative attitude with their “It is the owner’s fault, for doing this or that, blablabla…” they begun worrying about their reputation. Within a few hours of the post, someone from the factory, asked my friend to contact him privately and in no time the motor was under way to Italy and they would take care of the problem. The power of the internet .
He has the feeling they will send a brand new complete engine block rather than swapping the crankshaft, rod, piston, etc…
My friend had to pay $500.00 to ship it and he does not know if he will have to pay for shipping on the way back, and there will be a US Customs fee added to that. If my friend has to pay for it, the total between the round trip plus customs could amount to a hefty price tag and if the case Minari will get another mouthful from the owner. We will see how it pans out. The carbon fiber prop is still at the bottom of the bay☹️ and I guess they won’t help on this one. I have to say again, that my friend restores old cars, bikes and trucks, and is a very good mechanic, and he has a friend who custom builds racing power boats and is very familiar with building repairing them - he also had his opinion about the way the Minari was designed where the metal crack took place on the 180 re-drive support and mentioned it could have been done in a better way.
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and they would take care of the problem. The power of the internet 
.