[Jeff Higgins]

It's actually only a couple of ounces heavier than the two stroke, Tom. It carries the weight a little higher and raises the CG of the car a bit, so I do notice that a little.

The four strokes are pretty popular in Asia right now. I have never seen another one run in a car in my area, although there are a bunch of us on RCTech that exchange information on them. They are very poorly supported by O.S. in this country. I'm convinced they would be more popular if O.S. offered conversion kits for the more popular chassis. As it is, those of us running them have to pretty much make everything from engine mounts to exhaust systems. There is a flywheel and header pipe available, but that's about it. Gearing is another big issue. These have to be geared so much taller than two cycles that you really have to get creative. My pinion and spur gears are metric parts from HPI, so I had to adapt them to the Associated transmission and make my own pilot shaft for the engine to accept their clutch bell. Too much work for most people.

It's interesting too in that O.S. quit selling the FS26C here for over a year. They just brought it back as the "FS26CII" with a lot of improvements over the first one. Improvements our little gang on RCTech had been developing and bouncing off of each other for a couple of years. One of the guys on that forum markets R/C size dynos and has run virtually every engine on the market accross his. Our improvements raised the little thumper from about .4 hp to over .9 hp on his dyno. The very best .12 two stroke he has ever tested only hit .7 hp and some change. This is all relative, of course, and just numbers to use for comparrison. The manufacturers commonly rate their .12's at 1.1-1.5 hp, but there is no industry standard dyno in use just yet. He is convinced our hopped-up little thumpers would pull 1.5-1.7 on a dyno calibrated to show those numbers on a .12 two cycle.

David, if you want to start with your kid, do yourself a favor and follow your instincts to go electric. Years ago when I started with my then 9 or 10 year old, I thought gas was the only way to go. A couple of (very expensive) months of frustration down the road, we went electric. You will be maintaining two cars for awhile (I still am, although my son is getting better and better). It is a lot of work on a race day with a couple of novices breaking things every round. Gas cars are heavier, faster, and hit things harder. Now that we can pretty much get through a day without hitting anything the gas cars are great, but I still bring a couple of cars worth of spares.