Arden .19 Problem

[Phil Oestricher]

I am curious to see if anyone else has run into the problem I experienced with an Arden .19 I owned some years ago. The previous owner said that it would barely run (on glow or spark). My bench tests confirmed his words plus the fact that (on glow) it would run backwards almost as easily as in the correct direction. By probing the intake with a soft wire I found that the shaft rotary valve port opened very near to BDC rather than on the piston's upward movement. Thus the compressed new charge in the crankcase mostly blew back out the intake which is doubtless the reason for its strange behavior. My guess is that the tooling for forming the radial hole in the shaft became maladjusted and this shaft sneaked through and into a production engine which apparently was not test run at the factory. Has anyone else seen a similar problem with Ardens or any other engine?

[max hansen]

My Ardens have the crank open just before top dead center . All is not right with yours. Looking for a Arden .19 rear cover if you happen to ever run across one . Good luck , Max H. :D

[loucrane]

I/m curious, Phil...

Did you try running it clockwise? Yes, that would put a thrust load against the prop driver, unless you had an LH prop, but if the timing was reversed, it might run that way...