The mount works by sandwiching a front and
rear rubber disc on either side of the rear mounting
frame with a washer on the back and the engine
stand-off at the front. These rubbers act as mini
shock absorbers and dampen the vibrations produced by the engine.
In operation the mount works very well. The vibration levels transmitted into the airframe are very
low. Initially at certain low to midrange RPM the
engine shook a little but it was nothing to be concerned about and after running in and proper adjustment of the needles, the low-end vibration was
all but eliminated.
The engine is a single ring design and peering
into the exhaust port the cross hatching on the
cylinder wall looked good and the edge of the
transfer ports looked clean and well machined.
The cylinder head is a single cast unit with larger
fins on the lower exhaust side of the head to help
draw away heat from around the exhaust port. The
casting of both the head and body is well made
and follows in the fashion of DLE’s 55 designs.
The carburettor is a Walbro look alike made by
DLE and features a throttle linkage arm made for an
easy servo linkage setup (finally!) while the choke
arm is still the small Walbro original type. Tuning of
the needles from factory was slightly rich but acceptable for initial break in and they weren’t overly sensitive in adjustment, which was good. One point to
note with the new throttle arm design is that at
higher than idle throttle position, the arm starts to
cover the high and low mixture adjustment needles.
Even at idle the linkage to the throttle arm is still
slightly in the way and I see this as a good thing in
the way that it forces the user to make adjustments
to the engine with the engine off. Great as far as I’m
concerned because if you read the minutes of the
MAAA monthly meetings you’ll notice so many modellers being injured by rotating props. And a 26-inch
prop swinging around is a big hazard.
The supplied muffler is a little on the noisy side
(sorry I don’t own a db. meter) and DLE have tried
to keep the volume large whilst still trying to keep
the muffler practical, so they opted for a slanted
front to help keep it in various cowl shapes. The exhaust stub is short and a Teflon extension tube is
supplied with a clip to get the hot gases outside the
cowl. On the top of the muffler is a welded in nipple
for those that wish to add smoke to their models.
The ignition supplied looks identical to other DLE
ignitions, but is marked on the rear that it is specifically for the DLE-85. A nice feature of the ignition is
that it can operate on any voltage between 4.8v and
8.4v, so a small two cell LiPo can be used if preferred. The wiring harness also includes a lead for
connecting an optional tachometer if you want to.
The DLE manual says to run the engine on 30:1
fuel/oil mix and I ran this engine at that ratio using
BP Ultimate unleaded fuel and Mobile 2T fully synthetic two stroke oil. After burning three litres of fuel
the needles have been leaned from the factory set-
Airborne
55