RB engine identification and advice

[nerius]

Hi it's me again! (I posted pics of my Mugen Seiki Sting restoration a few days ago.)

I have my engine mostly apart and mostly cleaned. See photos. I cannot seem to get the piston sleeve out. Without getting the sleeve out I don't think I can remove the piston. Getting the carb out was a bit difficult - I didn't want to break or bend anything and it required a bit of force to get it out.

Also I was wondering if anyone could tell me anything about this engine - e.g. its size, its worth, its performance and quality. It obviously came out of a vintage 1/8 scale on-road racing car with sponge tires. The date of engine is estimated to be 1998 but it may have been built earlier than that. It was very frozen and caked in crud - I let it sit in denatured alcohol for a few days which allowed me to finally turn the crankshaft. I've been led to believe that this solvent is fairly safe for rubber and gaskets.

The underside has letters "033" etched. Perhaps this imples that it's a .33 engine (which is quite large I believe). I've seen numbers such as ".21" and ".28" and even ".35" (McCoy engine from RC500 era), and that's why I'm guessing that the "033" described the engine displacement. Also there seems to be some sort of serial number hand-etched into the aluminum just below the "RB" logo (see photo).

I'm new to this type of gas engine so any sort of words of wisdom would be appreciated! Advice on getting the piston sleeve out would be appreciated as well! Cheers.

[nerius]

I got the sleeve out using the zip tie method (Youtube). The method described there (a video made by a very articulate gentleman and sponsored by Boca Bearings) is to pass a zip tie through the exhaust port while the cylinder is at the bottommost position. Then, install the flywheel and nut for added leverage. Turn the flywheel forcing the cylinder up. The cylinder will butt up against the zip tie. This force will push the sleeve upwards. If too much force is needed the cylinder will do a shear cut of the zip tie. Putting this whole assembly into a vise and having had this sit in solvent for five days (and then spraying it with WD-40 afterwards) I was able to get the sleeve to budge slightly by putting two beefy zip ties through the exhaust port and then forcing the cylinder up in manner described. The zip ties were placed side by side in order to maximize the amount of perimeter being "pushed" such that chance of damage would be minimized. Once I got the sleeve up a bit I was able to lubricate the newly exposed sleeve surface and then push the sleeve back in. Doing this several times finally freed the sleeve up.

The cylinder cut a few zip ties before it finally worked using dual zip ties of the beefy variety.

Measured the cylinder diameter, it's 16.43mm. The stroke from topmost to bottommost position is roughly 16.6mm. This would make the cubic millimeters on this engine about 3500. Engine sizes such as ".21" are using which units I wonder.

Luckily I didn't do too much damage my first time rebuilding an engine. It was tough getting some of the parts apart after this thing has been sitting around for almost twenty years unused.