Charley

My Feedback: (2)

WOW! Where did you get that? It's an ignition engine, judging by the cam on the crank cover, the points & the spark plug. Do you have the coil?

CR

earlwb

Charley, actually several of us have GHQ engines in our collections. I happen to have two (maybe a third, I forget now) of them myself. One complete and the other missing the timer unit on the front. You can still get the little ignition coils for the vintage gas engines too. The engines were sold as casting kits, complete parts kits, and complete engines over the years. So one can run across many variations depending on how skilled or creative the engine maker was at the time. Some were even run as glow engines too. Earlier engines had a mehanite iron piston lapped into the cylinder and the later versions used a stamped steel piston that may or may not have been lapped into the cylinder. Interestingly enough many engines appear to not have been run at all and are basically new. Either the owner gave up trying to run it or they never tried. The AHC hobby shop also used to make a aluminum propeller for the engines, but the prop was reverse pitched, so you had to set the engine up to run in reverse with the metal prop. One safety note, never ever try to run the engine with the metal prop, the blades were known to break off.

Here are two of my engines:

dennis

My Feedback: (90)

The GHQ engine was originally known as the Loutrel and when made by Louis Lautrel it was an excellent engine for the day. quality degraded under the Winton Brothers of AHC fame who made the Thor,Buzz, Syncro B-30 and all of the other famous slag engines of the 30-50 era. They bought the Lautrel and it was all downhill from there. Their quality was so bad that they were one of the few machine shops that never got a contract during WW2 at a time when even a corpse could get a job or a contract. The Lautrel was set up to run clockwise and so was the GHQ. Modelers flipped that prop for hours and got no where with it .I well remember those adds extolling the GHQ's ability to pull a boat full of passengers or run a machine production belt. and all of the accessories that they offered including the aluminum prop which was a pusher prop.
As to Fox, Lets cut through a lot of nonsense about Fox. He had the potential to be the largest selling motor manufacturer in the world when he started but he was basically stubborn and for want of another word frugal. Those were two qualities that didn't help him when it came to adapting to an ever changing market and it passed him by.
Make no mistake Duke did make some trend setting engines but sorry to say he also made a huge pile of duds. He was particularly stubborn about carb design and spent years making one dud after another. As quality improved by leaps and bounds in every other engine manufacturers product, duke remained fixed in 50's technology. This did not set with a now impatient, ready to fly R/C fraternity and as they say cater to the market or loose. the market.
I would find it really invigorating if the Fox company really were to introduce any new engines especially in what I perceive as the twilight of the glow powered era of modeling. Even more so if they really did set a new standard for the company.
These are strictly my opinions and not open for discussion.

Dennis

Sport_Pilot

What kind of porting was that? Is the exhaust right over the carb? Looks like one of the very earliest loop type.

earlwb

Sport_Pilot,
Yes it is a loop scavenged engine, the early ones had a baffle on top of the piston. But when they started stamping the pistons, they went with a bump like baffle instead. As the piston goes up on the compression stroke the piston skirt uncovers the intake port to allow it to draw the air fuel mixture into the crankcase. Then on the power stroke it covers the intake port and the transfer port starts to push the exhaust gasses out the exhaust port.

earlwb

That is a good story, I like that explanation as to why their facility wasn't part of the war effort,
Thanks for sharing.

iskandar taib

My Feedback: (5)

I must admit, I was pretty annoyed when my ultra-rare Mark VII Combat Special ate a circlip - I can probably salvage the engine but the piston does have a huge gouge in the skirt. I've been offered quite a bit of money for the thing, gouge and all, by collectors, but someday I do want to build that genuine Allenplane kit I have and I want to put that honking engine on it.

Iskandar

iskandar taib

My Feedback: (5)

To be fair, I wouldn't know how to set a Fox RC carb either (or any other brand, for that matter). My engines all have huge bored out venturis and run on bladder pressure!

Iskandar

iskandar taib

My Feedback: (5)

Have you managed to get yours to run, and have you ever had them in a model? Sort of curious about this, because every time I read about the things, the main comment was about how they would NOT run!

I've seen several on ebay, so they're probably fairly common, never been tempted to buy one. (And definitely not for the $750 the last guy wanted..)

Iskandar

earlwb

Yes that one guy was way out of it there with that price he wanted for one. They did make quite a few of the engines and engine kits.So they are relatively common.

I have not tried to run one of mine yet. I keep meaning to have a go t it, but I haven't yet. But there are quite a few of them that work, unfortunately many more don't work. They had enough of the engines work, that it would confuse those who stated that none of them work. Now there was a guy who went to many of the MECA and model engine shows who would demonstrate that the GHQ engines work by running them. But the ones that work have been carefully fitted though.

iskandar taib

My Feedback: (5)

Yeah, also known as a "sideport" or "piston skirt" induction. Used to be quite common in the ignition era, you also see it on some of the early British diesels. Still quite common in lawnmower engines and such.

Iskandar

iskandar taib

My Feedback: (5)

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up as far as Fox goes. The Fox Stunt is probably the oldest engine design still being sold, if you've taken one apart you'd be amazed at how different it is from modern glows. Amazing it's still being made, but they must still be selling SOME of them, otherwise it wouldn't.

Some of the earlier (pre-Mark III) Combat Specials really were real duds - before the Mark III, the engine of choice was the ST G21-35, but they were fragile, and parts were hard to come by, so some people ran Foxes even though they were slower. The Mark III was faster than the ST, and a lot more available. This was Fox's first Schneurle Combat Special, with the distinctive high back door. This design made its way into most of Fox's .40-sized RC offerings in the following couple of decades.

Duke went out of his way to court Combat fliers. He'd design engines specially for Combat, and he'd show up at the Nats selling engines and parts out of the back of his Rolls at half price. In later years, after his death, it would be John Lowry and Betty Fox showing up at contests with the Fox van. I'd take the opportunity to stock up on plugs and Missile Mist. Back then, you needed to keep at least a couple dozen plugs on hand, the engines would blow plugs every other run and you'd pre-emptively change plugs every match (the used ones went into the "practice" box).

The final Combat Special was the Mark VII, in answer to the Nelson .36. Same diameter crank, almost as fast. But the problem was that they couldn't mass-produce it, supposedly the cranks were all hand-machined, so there never were many of them out there.

The last new engines Fox came out with was a line of large ignition engines, some years back. Haven't kept track of whether they managed to sell very many of them. I believe the company itself makes more than model engines, they also do contract machining and other things. One year they were selling a bicycle motor.

Iskandar

earlwb

Yes Fox does a lot of contract jobs. The model engines is more of a side business now as they don't really have to make the engines. But they do it because they like to. When I visited last, many years ago, they were making some of the tools for Sears at the time. Fox was impacted most by the Chinese wave of cheap low cost engines. But then that affected many other model engine brands too. Several of which have gone out of business too.

The new Fox carburetor as found on the new engines is superb. It works so well, that I bought several of the carbs to use on older engines too. So if a person doesn't mind carefully breaking in a new Fox 45 through 74 engine (I forget if they have it on the .40 engines but it might be there too), they can be a good choice. Fox still does their clunker trade in where you can get a new Fox engine for 50% off the retail price, by turning in a old clunker engine, and it doesn't have to work either, plus it can be a different brand even.

dennis

My Feedback: (90)

Isky,
That bicycle engine almost ruined him. It was made to run on a friction fit to the front tire and Duke made quite a splash with it. Too bad that most states then classified them as motorized vehicles with the need for all safety equipment and I guess you get the idea it tanked overnight. My closest friend bought one and we spent the 4th of July of that year getting it installed and running. The local governments didn't have to worry about someone speeding through town on a motorized bike. It wasn't speedy and just as the O&R compact engine and the Cox industrial engine that were also adapted to the bike conversion you still had to pedal to assist it up a moderate hill. we took it off and then spent some time reworking it. Got it set up for a precursor to the large R/C cars and there the project died. I can't remember where that huge slug of metal went but hopefully to a peaceful death somewhere. It probably joined the Rocket series, the Fox 36 R/E and all of the other mistakes that were made.

Sport_Pilot

The baffled engies are usually not loop scavanged but cross flow.Schnuerle porting is but one type of loop porting. An earlier type would be where the exhaust port is directly above the intake port, that is what the GHQ appeared to be.

Sport_Pilot

Actually he was not stubborn nor frugal. He almost lost theengine business because of lower cost imports in the 60's. About the time he was designing carbs, so he went through a cost cutting campaign that did cause some simple unrefined designs. The carb and venturi needles stand out the most.Then he hit it big with a lot of government contracting work and only redesigned engines from time to time. He died a wealthy man, but not because of the engine business.

Before he died he was refinining his designs, he did not finish this work but this has been completed recently. The new Fox engines are more like a Rossi than the older Fox's. They even break in quicker than the older ones. But there are a few models such as the .15 and .25that have not undergone this refinement.

Sport_Pilot

Actually he faired worse when the cheap Japenese engines came out in the late 50's and 60's. Some of the first ones were partial clones of his engines. By the time the Chinese engines came out Fox was not dependent on engines.

Sport_Pilot

IMO you have not been very accurate and facts are few. Add on engines for bicycles have always been legal and Duke Fox did not invent the idea. Saw one made in the 30's on Pickers. Never made enough to hurt his company no matter if they sold or not. He has probably made more parts and pieces for other two stroke gas engine companies than most other contract machine shop companies.

iskandar taib

My Feedback: (5)

Wow.. I didn't realize he had that much invested in it. Never saw one in person, but there were ads in Model Aviation. Doc Passen went to the Nats that year (can't remember, I think it was in Kansas) and he said Fox had several demo models for people to ride around. It would've been useful for getting around a Nats if you were on the Logistics staff, I'd have to admit (I did that three or four times).

Iskandar

iskandar taib

My Feedback: (5)

Just had a look on Fox's web site to see if I could find something about new engines, and they're not there yet. What I see is the old lineup - the .40 sized ones based on the .36 design, and the old big 'uns (the .60 Eagle, etc.). The .15 and .25 Schnuerle are the same ones I remember from before.

They still make Missile Mist - good grief, $43 a gallon? I suppose that would be $21.50 out of the back of the Fox van, if it still comes to the Nats.. John Lowry retired around 2000 or so, he was the one who brought the van to the Nats.

Iskandar

[email protected]

My Feedback: (1)

i had a > whizzer bike ,, in 1948

Sport_Pilot

And if you go to the blog site you will see that the mention of new egines is dated 2009. There have been a couple since then, the Stunt .60, the ceramic Stunt .35 (formally was only a piston and sleever replacement). And the Fox Gas .50.

IMO not really anything that would help them in RC.

Sport_Pilot

http://www.whizzermotorbike.com/

Prop_Washer2

My Feedback: (26)

Oh the Chinese made OS Engines....I'll raincheck that suggestion....You do realize that O.S. has moved their manufacturing to China now...

earlwb

So far that is only the OS AXII engines and we have only seen the .46 and .55 AXII engines as having been made in China so far. I think their four stroke engines and higher end engines are still make in Japan. I thinkOS is testing the Chinese capability before they commit too much to it though. So OS is not having all of the engines made there yet.