earlwb

Over the years I have accumulated a bunch of old engines of many types. I was checking the engines a while back and oiling them, and took a bunch of pics.

1960's FOX FAI 049. You can still buy Fox 049 engines from several sources as well as glow heads too. I actually have three of the newer Old Fox FAI 049's. I have a old 1950's Chicken Hawk biplane that I intend to stick a Fox 049 on for flying around soon. It is recent scratch build from plans you can still find for sale.

The FOX FAI was about equal to a COX TeeDee 049, but it could turn a slightly larger prop or a prop with a little more pitch to it. This was because it originally was a 07 and FOX made a smaller bore for 049 size, and it wound up having a longer stroke to it then.




Fox Comet 07 engine that Fox made for Comet when they were producing RTF control line planes for a while. Fox later had a falling out with Comet and wound up with a large supply of parts. FOX cut the intake at a angle and on some engines ground off the Comet logo on the crankcase and had his first 07. Later he made the 049 version from the 07 design as well. The Comet engine has a horizontal mounting thus the fuel tank vents appear to be in the wrong place. This engine example is notable in that it didn't have the Comet logo on the side of the crankcase.




Another person made this pic showing the different FOX 1/2a engines that were made.


My 1962 vintage Fox 049




another person made this pic showing the different fuel tank backplates on a FOX 049:


Here is a old Fox advertisement featuring the FOX 07 back circa 1961:

earlwb

Now I have some old Testors and Testors McCoy engines as well.

Here is a later model 049 Testors engine when they figured they could go for a plastic plug in crankcase design. Thus they shaved costs about as much as one could by even eliminating the mounting screws as well. If I remember right this engine was off a old Testors plastic P51 control line airplane that I had way back when. This one has a neat modified head for a standard short glow plug too.




This is one of my earlier examples when they still used some kind of aluminum zinc alloy for crankcrase.




This examle used a external fuel tank engine mount for a Cox engine. I used to fly it on a Airtronics Q-tee for a couple of years or so. I rebuilt the engine a couple of times.

earlwb

Here is one of my old Wen Mac 049 engines.  I actually wound up not using the engine as some bullies stomped on and destroyed my new plane way back when I was a kid then. So I never got to mount or use the engine. I sort of shelved it after that episode.




Wenmac used to cast in mounting holes but never finished drilling them out, as it depended on how they were using the engine at the time.

earlwb

Here is my example of a OK Cub 049 engine:







It uses regular short glow plugs. They also had glow heads for them as well.

earlwb

I have a bunch of Gilbert engines (the famous erector set company). These are really neat and there are several individuals that still sell them for very reasonable prices. The Gilbert 07 and 11 run very strong. A club in California actually uses the Gilbert 11's in RC pylon racing. They claim the engines run better than the OS 10 FP's and equivalent engines. One cool feature is the Gilbert engines use piston port induction and so they run equally as well forwards and backwards. The 07's came with a reverse prop, so youhad to start the engine backwards to run forwards. Also a reverse running engine on a control line plane had the engine torque helping to pull the airplane out in the circle too.

Gilbert 07 example:






The Gilbert 11 has really cool dual exhaust muffler stacks. One is long and one is short as originally they had these in control line airplanes and the engine was angled outward on the airplane, so the inboard exhuast stack had to be a little longer of course.

MJD

My Feedback: (1)

Nice stuff, thanks for the photos. Had a Men Mac and Testors or two over the years. I remember building a FF Sniffer with a Wen Mac .049, think around '82 or so.

earlwb

Here is my example of a FOX 09 Rocket. This had space age missile streamlining with the crankcase design and rear intake. I actually have several of these too.








Fox also had their first .10 engine that came out circa 1958. But shortly afterwards they had the .10 RC version with a simple rotating exhaust baffle for a throttle. I have a few extra ones of these as well.










I evern have some extra 09 and 10 glow plug heads too. I plan on drilling and tapping out a bad glow head and convert it for using short or long glow plugs. They use a regular glow element inserted into a hole in the head, so it won't change the operation much if any.

smoknrv4

My Feedback: (11)

Cool to see this vintage stuff...DROOL....thanks for the pics!

Tee Bee

Yep. Neat stuff there.

vicman

My Feedback: (10)

I really like that Rocket. I think at some point I'll develop a need for one of those to accompany the other smallies I keep to make me feel better. Very cool. Thanks for shareing.

earlwb

Thanks guys.

I never won first place in 1/2a pylon racing but I came in second or third a lot. At the time we had a class that used Airtronics Q-tee planes with Cox Black widow engines, and the hosting club provided the fuel. it made for great excitement as many of the races were won by a spinner length. Later we had a more or less unlimited no rules other than you had to use a Cox Tee Dee .049 or .051 engine. The unlimited planes evolved into 24 inch wing span planes of about 100 square inches of wing area. We used the streamlined engine mount that a company used to sell for Cox Tee Dee engines. We also used 100mah or 225 mah nicad packs for the two channel radio. No throttle of course.

Andrew

Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

andrew

earlwb

You are welcome.

I happened across my old ACE Littlest stick remains. I had a Cox Pee Wee 020 on this one. But i have flown two of them with Cox Tee Dee 010's too.
I think I still have the wing out in the storage shed, I need to go look for it and fix it back up again.



I still have a Ace Littlest Stick kit too, unopened:


I have had a bunch of COX engines over the years as well. This is only a small pile of engine tools I happen to have. I still have a bunch of these tools out in the storage shed in a box still. You used to get a tool with every engine you bought.

Doc.316

Earlwb;
Wow! Nice engine collection! I bet the $15 for the 09 glow plug gave you some heartburn when you bought it! That is expensive even at todays prices....
Nice collection...enjoyed looking at them.
Steve

build light

Earl, thanks for sharing with us.
qoute: " You used to get a tool with every engine you bought."

In fact, I believe with the Cox .049 engines you would get two. These tools are not showing up with every engine purchase anymore athough there were probably tons of them made.

Robert

balsa brain

Earl do you also post on a scooter forum, Scoot Dawg, if I remember correctly? If you are the same person I always enjoyed reading your posts there especially the ones about how your scooter was doing after such and such so many miles.

earlwb

Thanks guys.

yeah that is me over there too.

Yeah that price on the glow head was tough. But the 09's and 10's use the same glow head though. I got it as a spare. But as soon as a glow head element dies, I plan to drill and tap it for a conventional screw in glow plug either a short or long. In looking at the glow plug head and element, using a regular glow plug should do nothing to change the performance.

earlwb

You know, I think you are correct. They used to include two tools in a engine box, when you bought it. You needed two tools, one to hold the cylinder as you loosenedor tightened up a new glow head or something.
Although I like COX engines and for a number of years I preferred running COX engines over many of the other engines. Mostly due to COX still being in business and the others having gone out of business or discontinuing their small engines.

I found a few photos of my Cox engines from circa 1991:
A Cox 049 reed valve with muffler




A Cox049 with a RC throttle muffler sleeve




A Cox 049 Tee Dee with a RC throttle sleeve, since it had sub piston port induction, you could not get a very low idle, as the engine whould choke and die from the exhaust. I was running this engine on a ACE GLH RC plane for a long time.


You can see the gap under the piston skirt in this pic here:


The Cox Tee Dee's used a higher compression head than the other Cox engines. These had a little knurled circle on top to identify them from the lower compression standard heads:




Oh yeah, you had to have a Cox engine piston ball joint reset tool too:

jeffie8696

Love those McCoy .049s. Ihave a pair in my collection. If you ever need parts for the plastic case Testors let me know. Ihave a whole bag of em minus the piston and cylinders. Iused them to rebuild aluminum case ones.

gcb

That is correct. For early Cox engines, you would insert one wrench in the exhaust slot and the other on the glow plug. Since the cylinder walls were thin on the early engines, you had to make sure the wrench was inserted in the exhaust properly or you could burr the cylinder.

Some later engines had either two narrow slits or had the exhaust often covered with wire mesh or a muffler, etc. so someone came up with milling the top fin to make a slot, and creating a wrench to fit that slot.

Here are some of my Cox engines. First we have some product engines showing the different exhausts. Next are various Golden Bees. Some Thermal Hoppers. Some TD's (top row are .09's, bottom right is early .15, rest are .049's. Then Space Bug Jr's (they came in various tank colors). Finally we compare size og Black Widow to Space Bug. I hope the pics come up in the right sequence.

If you have questions about some other Cox engines, I may have pics...except Space Hopper. []

George

gcb

Earl,

Those are some excellent pictures and are accompanied by some excellent information. I will attempt to fill some gaps and add different versions, when possible. I guess there are a lot of us who enjoy the old engines.

Here are my AC Gilberts. The top one is an .11 that I got at a yard sale. When I run it, I use the thrust washer and nut from a Fox .15 slant plug. The .07's with the starter/flywheel came with pusher props and had been ripped out of an AC Gilbert "flying kite" type RTF. The remaining ones came disassembled in plastic bags. One (not shown) could not be completely assembled because the crankshaft had not received the final grinding step. All others run well, but I only ran them enough for break-in. They started easily.

George

earlwb

Nice engines there GCB. There are a couple three fellows selling leftover engines and or parts too. The parts are essentially brand new too.
SB1Photo sells the Gilbert stuff on Ebay. He has a bunch of 11's and some 07's too. He got some pallet loads of parts that languished in a warehouse asfter Gilbert was bought a long time ago. He cleans and re-oils each engine before he can sell them to us.
cgi.ebay.com/AC-Gilbert-American-Flyer-11-Model-Airplane-Engine-/280497542369

SB1Photo is probably the authority on the engines, but he also is a authority on the American Flyer trains and trainsets too. he sells those as well. This is what he stated about the 07 varieties.
There were three basic crankcase versions for the 07.
Version 1 .07 came with a thin walled crankcase and venturi intake tube, as well as a thin wall around the needle valve assembly. The Version 1 needle valve was a pressed fit, coil spring needle valve. The version 1 also came with a machined aluminum glowhead. Some version 1 crankcases were used until gone and fitted with the Version 2 needle carb.

The version 2 crankcase came with thicker walls, presumably because of the brittle nature of the first version, and a noticeably thicker area around the needle carb. Version 2 also came with a new carb, a one piece valve body, with a threaded end, and a ratchet spring to keep the needle from turning.

Version 3 had a whole newneedle carbdesign, a two piece, fuel inlet and spring retainer on the other side, both ends threaded, and the crankcase of version 3 was threaded as well where the needle carb parts thread in. The same ratchet spring was used on 2 and 3. The crankcase was made of an entirely different metal than the first 2, and the threading for the cylinder is different, they are not interchangeable. version 3 exclusively used the diecast glowhead. version 3 had by far the largest productiuon numbers of the 3 types.

Version 1 had a different crankshaft, with smaller bearing surfaces and a smaller diameter counterweight. Version 2 came with either kind of crankshaft, as the earliest versions were used up, and the later version introduced.

I got a few pics I ran across about the famous Gilbert "Wing Thing". I didn't take the pics myself, someone else did. But this was a pretty cool control line contraption or plane or kite or something to fly around. it used a Gilbert .07 engine in a pusher arrangement.. We have some people making up similar machines today for Radio Control planes. Sort of the precursor to the hang gliders and ultra-lights that came along later. This was back in the 1950's too.

gcb

For those who like McCoys, here is a Baby Mac (.049). Next are some diesels. These were called Duro Glo. The large one is an .09, the others are .049. McCoy also made a glow version of the beam mounted one, but I have long since lost it.

Next we have the Testors 8000. I THINK the 8000 was to signify .8cc...which is .049ci. This was the last engine Testors produced before going belly up. It was an excellent running engine. We have a cast metal version that came with a space ship type RTF using a pusher prop. The standalone version came with a plastic tank. They snapped together. The single one is shown from the top. The cylinder sits sideways and the CL tank is filled by removing the plug in the lower right.

The final pic is the Testors #4 which was sold just before the 8000 (I think).

George

Edit: Last pic should be second pic.

gcb

Earl,
Yes, the Wing Thing. I had seen the advertisement for it but not the real thing. I got my .07's on a special sale from Polk's back in the late sixties (I think). The two with flywheels had been ripped out of the RTF's and still had screws and a bit of plastic on them. My guess is that they had been "rapidly disassembled" and sold in bulk to Polks.

George

Edit: After looking at the Wing Thing engine installation close up, I now know why they only had one (threaded) mounting hole on the engine's mounting flanges.

earlwb

You know the COX .049 Black Widows I remember, back around 1980, had a cylinder with four narrow slits cut in for the exhaust ports. The Black Widows I see now all have the two larger ("regular"?) exhaust ports cut into the cylinder.


I wonder now if you hadn't got the correct crankshaft for the Gilbert 07 where you stated it was too big for the crankcase.