CISON FL4-175 FLAT HEAD ENGINE Full Review By Dennis
July 09, 2022There are a lot of cool features in this thing that I have seen that I want to share with you guys and there's a lot of honesty with the Cison company.
The first thing I want to go over with is this really nice wooden box that they put their stuff in. I always believed that when a company addresses its product is like a tuxedo. If they take the time to put it in something like this instead of just a piece of cardboard, this company stands behind their product and they had a couple of failures here and there and the reason why these are so late is that they did not want to put these out yet until they figured out whatever little thing that they had to do.
There are two sets of head gaskets and if you look closely, you'll see the head gasket. It's a very nice material, it's thick and it is actually like a fiber back, it's not a graphite shim, so you see the thickness in that now you can use one or two of these according to their manual.
Gasket
There are numbers on this because it matches the rods that go on it. so when you assemble it pay attention, use your rods that have the same numbers as your crankshaft. If you notice all the valves are numbered they have been seated to that particular valve seat, so when you put it back together, make sure that you do your one through eight and you put it back together that way and the quality of this stuff is just amazing.
When you look through, you'll see a bubble pack at the top that way there none of the hardware changes homes during shipping, everything in there stays in that particular slot. Great idea, Cison. I love it they did the same here too.
I'll break out the cam shaft and I'll show you the rods I was really impressed with the quality of their connecting rods.
I'm just gonna show you how the rods are packed, you see how they're packed one two three four and it goes with your crankshaft. Don't erase things take a photo of this when you put it together and I'll tell you why. See one two three four, because the rods are matched to each journal on this, which is a great idea. If you look at the the connecting rod. There's no bronze bearing, however, this thing is coated. It's an alloy rod that's coated, so it has protection and it's a really thick big end on the rod there i like.
In the bottom of the box we have the flywheel, the back plate and we have two starter motors and I'll tell you why in a minute and we have this really amazing looking 3d printed intake manifold. This is 3d printed and it's it's aluminum. It is stunning, this thing is just beautiful. The quality of this is amazing, I love it.
Now your exhaust manifold is the same thing 3d printed aluminum, and they machine all the ends anything that has to go up to the cylinder block is machined, and it is very nice. So the same with the intake manifold, you look where it butts up against it and it's super super nice. When the carburetor goes in, it's all machined and it's got your set screw, so that was i was i love that.
I didn't get a chance to really fully see the instructions but everything is super quality on this thing i mean it's just it's amazing quality. I just i was blown away because I've seen some aluminum 3d printed stuff before and it's really scary-looking but these are true looks like they're casted. It almost looks like they're wax casted there it's just beautiful.
Some nerd talk before we start the Cison L4 -175 engine build!
At the very beginning, I‘m going to go over a couple of things before I start the build the engine kit. I compare the crankshaft between latest version of Toyan L400 and Cison L4 -175.
When I see a crankshaft even if I turn in this way, it still rose back to the heavy spot on the bottom so that means that if you want to balance this crankshaft, you need to do a flywheel or something on the front harmonic balancer and the flywheel on the back needs to have either a weight on one side or weight taken out of the other. So it's not that bad, the other ones wouldn't even roll like this this at least rocks back and forth now what happens is this causes all kinds of havoc when this thing's out of balance like that.
The Cison 175, it's a lot smaller. It could fit into a 1/6 scale but I'm thinking this would be perfect for like a 1/8 scale you could squeeze it into 110 and I'm still going to try to put this in the bruiser frame because i still have one tamaya bruiser frame and complete setup that I've always wanted to build something cool with i might do that with this one.
It just it just rolls freely, it'll roll right off the razor blades that means that this thing has been thoroughly checked and balanced so there should be very little vibration in this very little and when you're rolling across the table. It likes to roll it just keeps rolling on a flat surface and it just keeps going from low to low, now when you try the L400 one. the lobes on the top are too thin if you notice the difference of the journals on these things, see how wide these are up here and how they got them shaved if you look at these they're very thin right here. All this comes to play with balancing an engine, so if you're going to build something like this just be careful you don't cut yourself because usually i hot glued these things on here, but I learned one time after i sliced my hand up and reaching for something one time that it's not cool so when you're done balancing your crank immediately take the razor blades off this thing and tape them back to the plate and then put it away.
Even with the bell housing on the back of the Cison 175 it's still going to be smaller than this but with the head on here it might be just a hair taller because the cylinder head on this is kind of thick then it's got a valve cover on top of it, so this has the protruding water jacket on the top here but they're very comparable to the same size. Now I have put the L400s in an 8-scale set up there with my jeep and I've also put this into a fifth scale so my next build is going to be that I'm glad to see this is why the valves are numbered they just fell out. My next build's going to be something comparable with this and this here will probably go back into something smaller because of the rpm and on the very back of these things here if you've seen Steve's channel there from black lamps a bigger bearing back here would help too, because this is a new upgraded block that's got the bigger bearing in the front now. If they put his bearing disintegrated back here because I think the gear offset of the gears and stuff that was wearing on, so a lot of tension there but if you notice the new x-power L200 comes through, go directly into the transmission. There's no spur gear to change on there and now I know why they did that because the side tension on these things will wear the bearings down so anyway I just want to point this out too.
Cison L4 -175 full build
I'm going to throw in a couple of screws in the back here. They say really important these are all three millimeters because for some reason they want you to put this in after your rods and everything else i don't know why, but they show here this is number five. These are your three millimeters,so one two three four five six and the one in the upper corner up here has an 2.5, which you have one extra for that, They supply you in the kit and like i say i went with option one, not option two. you can always go back to that later nice thing about this kit. They give you options which i think is wicked cool because most engines you have one option and that's you know whatever is in the kit if stuff's there because I've had kits where stuff was missing, so it's kind of a totally stop the build.
You see a little recess that are in these things there you can put o-rings in there and i suggest you do it because it ain't going to seal itself without an o-ring, so it'll have an air leak so you won't be able to pull the fuel in, so it doesn't matter about the exhaust, they can leak all over the place.
Learn more details from Dennis Dempsey's video here.
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Where to buy
Cison L4 -175 :
Toyan Fs-l400:
4 cylinder engine:
https://www.stirlingkit.com/collections/four-cylinder-engine