Charley

My Feedback: (2)

What makes you think I was referring to you? Hay, you're not the only one posting here. Sheesh!

CR

Charley

My Feedback: (2)

Not a Fox but maybe interesting: I had a ST S.40 ringed that I ran on Cool Power 15%. One day I got a lean run and fried the thing. I've run castor/syn ever since. Anyhoo, Indy RC was going out of the Como/ST business and had a fire sale. I picked up the ABC piston, sleeve & head for the S.40 cheap. The ABC didn't produce more power than the ringed version on the same fuel & prop.Kind of surprised me. I still have that engine on a Scat Cat.

CR

earlwb

Fox could have developed a four stroke engine. But I think by the time four strokes became popular everyone at Fox was too old then. They did have some design work done offsite though. Their control line .60 engine, the last carb design and the ceramic cylinder sleeves were examples of that offsite design work.

F4 Phantom blue angles

Im old school, In my opinion,Caster is one of the best lubricants out there.

Duncman

I am pretty sure that Fox has ceased all manufacturing activities. They were manufacturing widjets for other markets but even that has dried up on them.

hsukaria

In this hobby you have folks that don't want to fiddle with engines and want them to run out of the box and then on the other extreme guys who love to fiddle with engines and actually WANT to profile needles, change head buttons, and modify carbs. So in that sense, some people will gravitate to Fox or similar engines.

the pope

Hi there Husky . If my engines dont work they get sent back , or a even a shorter trip over the back fence . Heck I even sent one to the U.S.A just to get rid of it .

hsukaria

It seems that I like to collect bad engines

the pope

Could be worse , BAD women

hsukaria

That would be BAD.

Maybe my engines are not bad, just "undervalued"

1QwkSport2.5r

There's only a few engines I could never get to run right. All were Fox. The ones that didn't run for crap were sold and the ones that ran well have been sold. - the NIB .46 I had just sold last week finally. Must be dumb luck.

hsukaria

I only had trouble with one Fox engine, a 74. It turns out that it had been modified and I didn't know it because I bought it used. I found out after I traded it away. But the other Fox engines have been near perfect.

earlwb

I only remember one Fox engine giving me trouble. The carb wasn't working right so I swapped it out and the engine then ran great. A few years later I put the flaky carb on a different engine and it worked great on it. Go figure. Now then I have had a couple of Fox engines that took literally ages to break in. They were tight from the factory and I had to run them rich for a very long time before they started to run full power. I had to fly them on a Ugly stick at the time and at first it barely had the power to fly, so to speak. But once the engines loosened up they came alive. I still have both of them and one of them is on a airplane flying still.

When people found out I like Fox engines, I used to get their engines that they didn't want for various reasons. Some people would give them to me in frustration. I would check the engine out and mount it on a plane and go flying it the next weekend. Usually it was just the person somehow getting the carb adjustments all kattywhumpus messing it up. But with some engines the previous owner ran them lean too many times thus damaging them.

There was also a period of time where Fox setup the engines with high compression for little to no nitromethane in the fuel. But here in the USA people tended to like to use 15% nitro glow fuel a lot and the engines just did not like the stuff. But prior to that high compression change Fox would suggest using 20% to 25% nitro glow fuel in the engines for best performance. So yeah there was some confusion going on at the time.

The Fox earlier butterfly valve carbs were pretty good, but the low speed mixture screw interferes with the high speed needle and that confused people at the time. The Fox MK-X two needle carbs tend to confuse people a lot too. It is weird but it is true. They always tend to adjust the low speed needle which of course messes up everything. Fox didn't start hiding the low speed needle (like OS and some others did) until the glow engines were on the decline. But their last carb design was really quite good. There was something of a macho image for the guys though, very few of them really read the instructions of course.

hsukaria

Most guys quit reading the instruction manuals when they hit puberty.

But honestly, I worked with the Fox EZjust, MkX, butterfly, and the newest 2 needle carbs. They were all good and easy to tune even though I am not an expert tuner.

Tildy

Yesterday I got to finally after a bunch of ground running fly my Kaos 60. This engine had never even been mounted in a plane till now. A few slobbery flights and a few more a little leaner and this engine is breaking in nicely. The power is fantastic, the sound even better running an aftermuffler just like fliteline solutions described. Wonderful sound and power. It's running nicely on 10% with one head shim. The last fox I had was a .25 when I was just a young lad and how I've missed the sound, power and realiability. Hand starts nice too!

Aaron L.

Glad to hear it!

earlwb

That brought back a memory. Many years ago I had a .20 size Futaba ARF low wing plane what was quite similar to a KAOS. But it had a ABS plastic fuselage with a wood frame and a balsa wing and tail. I flew it for a long time with a Fox .25 RC engine. But the baffle port engine was getting long in tooth and I thought I would get a OS .25 FSR engine to put in it and hop it up more. Fox didn't have a Schnuerle ported .25 yet. Anyway I put the OS engine on the plane tuned it up and it ran well, and felt quite powerful. So on its maiden flight I was thinking, wow, night and day difference with all this extra power and performance . The plane it was flying awesome too. Then the wing folded and it lawn darted in onto a hard asphalt surface, and destroyed everything. Go figure.

aspeed

A lot of planes have folded wings from too much power. It is good to remember that a plane made before 1975 or so did not have a schneurle motor, so a .19 to .35 at the time would be at the top of the power range with even a tame .25 LA. Of course, a schneurle .40 is used, and a .55 might bolt in...... You know how it goes. if big is good, then bigger is better, and too big is just right. Yes I have folded up about a half dozen wings. Fun, funny, but I always seem to strip a servo and ruin a receiver. All the motors were OK though. Lawn dart fuselages maybe two were repaired.

gmeyers

Just kind of an aside. Fox made a few 4 strokes for the military (drones I think) and they tried their hand at go cart engines too but I don't know how that worked out. I went down to the factory a couple of times and had lunch with Betty Fox at Ponderosa Steak House. My last visit was about 1994 or so and they had pretty much shut down with little real production going on. I had always wanted an ABC Eagle 74 and Betty Fox got some parts together and assembled me one and I have it to this day (never ran ) It has great compression and a good feel when you turn it over by hand. It was interesting to see a crew of workers (all girls) welding the elements into glow plugs by hand. I wish I could get my hand on one of those welders today.

gmeyers

I needed something from FOX so I took a chance and called their old phone down in Fort Smith Ark and got voicemail - so I left a message and got an email back from MECOA and here is what they said. "We have moved the FOX inventory to California and we are sorting through things now - what was it you were looking for??" their email is [email protected] So we may be able to get some of whatever is left over for parts and possibly MECOA will have the tooling and molds to make something more. I know the ABC foxes will perform with nearly anything available today.

aspeed

If Mecoa has got a hold of everything, you can get stuff, but don't count on any new parts being made. It just does not seem to happen despite all good intentions. I am still mad that the Conquest parts dried up, oh, and GMS, and...... Don't forget that Fox made a slick bicycle conversion kit. Apparently it sold well until concerned mothers and lawyers put a halt on that.

Lou Crane

I also remember something about a larger Fox engine, for a strap-on friction drive bicycle package. Seem to recall 2-cycle, possibly spark, and around 3 1/2 cubic inches?
Mid- to late-1950's ?
Mounted over the rear axle. Output was a friction wheel against either tread or side of that tire? Possibly with a lift-off gizmo to disengage friction contact? May have been pull-start, or roll forward and 'bump it' when in the ON mode?
Never saw one except in an ad or two...

aspeed

I thought the 1970s, I couldn't read in the 1950s. I may have seen the ads in older magazines though. People still want those, but they are pretty rare. I have an old O&R bicycle motor somewhere. That could be the 1950s.

gmeyers

I would like to add that if anyone wants to try ordering FOX parts from MECOA I may have a parts list with part #s on it. I'm scrambling right now to put my parts list together.
Have fun out there -- it's more important than you know.

JUST IN; We bought FOX out completely but it was quite disheveled by the time we got there. The 53 foot semi's of parts, tooling and machinery will take some time to sort. Lots of the old machinery was left for scrap or to be sold in Ft Smith. Add to this we are in the middle of sorting all the WEBRA inventory right now, we bought them a few years ago. We just finished the MACS tuned pipes inventory we bought out so our plate is pretty full.


JUST IN:

earlwb

I surmised they would buy out what was left of Fox Mfg. But there may not be a lot of parts left though. But one never knows about what they had left over the years. Tooling would be nice to have if one starts to make new engines. But I doubt they will though, as they have engines of the same displacement they can sell instead.