multimike

A friend showed up at the field today with a vintage plane powered with a GHQ 60, he has redesigned it and it ran well, he would like to know itf there are any more GHQ flyers out there MIke

Dsegal

> are any more GHQ flyers out there <

Are you kidding? No one ever got an airplane to fly with a GHQ engine when they were new! (G) It is generally considered the worst engine ever widely sold in the US.

multimike

You are right, there were 100.000 of them sold, started out at $20 dropped to $4:95 and then back up to $20, this guy is a machinist and he builds his own model engines, rare stuff, he says he figured out why the engines would never run and fixed the problem, there is no throttle and no muffler, it started right up, he advanced the spark and away we went, it was quite a trip back in time, MIke

ballgunner

My Feedback: (1)

Mark yourself as a very unusual person. You have heard a GHQ engine actually run. The consensus among engine collectors is that it was a very good engine to begin with. That was in Australia where it was marketed under a different name. Someone in the US of A bought the whole shmear and started marketing it here. They changed the basic design. One of the things they removed for convenience of production was the baffle on the top of the piston. Voila!! No more running engine. I've actually heard one pop a couple of times. That was back in the late 30's. I always thought I had found a spot in history but now it appears that you are #1.

Jim Thomerson

Loutrel, is that the name for the original GHQ? I've heard the story that the GHQ was made by various high school shop classes during WWII. I saw a thing in Aeromodeller about a guy in England who has one, unmodified, which runs fine. I used to have one of the cast aluminum left-hand GHQ props. Also someone said that repro GHQ's of good quality are available. No idea where.

Has any one had experience with the Buzz engines once sold by AHC?

Jim

r_jsmith

Somehow Bernie Winston who with his brother was the owner of Americas Hobby Center (AHC) marketed the thing. The common label for the GHQ and the later Buzz engines was "slag"!.

Because of the poor material, bad machining and sloppy fit the chances of one of these engines running was remote.

If I remember correctly the GHQ had some cast iron and steel parts which in a properly fitted example would allow the engine to start, run and perhaps impart a bit of power to to prop. Incidentally many GHQ's for reasons unknown to me would operate on a flywheel in a boat!

The Buzz engines which succeeded the GHQ in the late 40's were all soft Aluminum and the unwary buyer was not so lucky as the purchaser of a GHQ. If you got a Buzz to start it would stop in short order because of rapid wear to the moving parts.

I worked for AHC in the late 40's and early 50's and I knew Bernie pretty well. He was a real nice guy an early pioneer in the mail order discount business BUT Bernie was not above making a buck via sale of these garbage engines.

There was a Buzz CO-2 engine sold at the same time as the IC engines discussed above. the CO-2 engine was an excellent design, well built and very competitive!

Richard Smith

multimike

YOu are right, the plane is a Loutrel. made to use GHQ engines, nest time he comes up I will get some pictures, it is an excellent flyer, just a free flight with R/C added, thanks for the info I will pass it on MIke

Jim Messer

My Feedback: (2)

Back in the early forties when the GHQ hit the market, I was very active in free flight. We ran Bantams, Ohlssons, Tiger Bunches, Dennymites, and Brown Jr's. These engines powered Zippers, Sailplanes, Buzzard Bombshells, Clippers, Buccaneeers, Interceptors, and many others. It was always nice to see someone show up at a free flight contest with a GHQ powered model, because we knew that he would spend the entire day trying to get it started. I saw a lot of GHQ's, but never did see one run. The GHQ you talk about that runs is a "first". Put it on E-bay - you might make a fortune - after all - you can say that out of 100,000 engines produced, this one runs!

dennis

My Feedback: (90)

Actually the first GHQ's did run as they were made from Lautrel parts. Another interesting thing is that a lot of them that I saw had the points set up for clockwise running. You could literally wear yourself out flipping it counter clockwise. They were available during the second world war simply because there was a large unsold pile of them and AHC simply took advantage of the shortage of any quality motors. Yes they were really upstanding businessmen[:@]
Had a friend who grew up in Brooklyn in the 40's and he did see GHQ's started with a huge flywheel and rope start.
I never had a Buzz but all the slags were products of the Winton brothers, as such I had a Thor and with that really ineffective wiper contact system you knew that it wouldn't run. We used to put a glow plug in them and use a 50/50 mix of gas/oil and leave the battery hooked up, it did run. Actually did get about 6K tops out of one of them. If you used glow fuel it would eat itself up in about 10 minutes or less.
Dennis

multimike

Great stuff, thanks to all of you I will pass it along to my friiend, he has NO use for computers, does anyone know of a web site with maybe a history of the engines, a funny footnote, a magazine had run an article about the engines and people who were active in rebuilds, my friend Bill B------ phoned them and asked about it and the contact name they gave him was HIS !!!! Mike

jessiej

I have a GHQ in my collection. It appears never to have been run. Now I know why!

jess

dennis

My Feedback: (90)

I will add one thing more to the GHQ story as I know it. I had seen a very nice restoration of a GHQ with better then average castings. Apparently it had had extensive cleanup and rework. I do know that it used a piston from a K&B 61 and was really a superb runner. Stock it wasn't but at that time it turned a few heads when it ran.
Dennis

r_jsmith

The Thor was indeed a step up from the Buzz line. It was not a bit unusual for one to start (if glow converted.) Mind you I said start nothing more! If you were lucky erhaps a couple of restarts were in the cards.

A top performing Thor could taxi a Ukie around the circle (slowly.) It goes without saying that there was insufficent power to reach anything approaching flying speed.

Richard Smith

multimike

I was talking to the owner last night, he will be back and I will get pictures of it RUNNING !!! He was telling me of one guy that bought the GHQ could not get it running and found out that it was manufactured a short distance away, he took it to the shop, the guy put on a huge flywheel on it, hooked it up to a car coil and it ran, well sort of, like an old hit a miss engine, the flywheel kept it spinning with and occasional bang from the engine, they took it home and it never ran again !!!! The owner also has plans for the Sportster and the Rouge (Sp) he says they are both very ugly planes, both designed to take the GHQ engine Great stuff MIke

r_jsmith

<The owner also has plans for the Sportster and the Rouge (Sp)>

I belive that "Air Age Gas Models" which at one time was available through Model Airplane News had plans and an article reprint of the Sportster.

From what I recall it was truly ugly and surprsingly small for a .60 powered free flight.

Richard Smith

multimike

Yep that is exactly what me friend said, a truly ugly plane LOL Mike

Al Stein

Two or Three things about GHQs...

The Loutrel piston was cast, machined, and lapped to fit the cylinder and had square shoulders for port timing and TWO sharp vertical baffles to control combustion chamber scavenging... the GHQ piston was pressed out of sheet with very rounded shoulders, not machined or otherwise fitted to the cylinder bore, and had a single, very round baffle-y area.

The Loutrel intake was placed at a particular distance from the crank shaft center to cause opening at closing at the right time... the GHQ intake intake comprised three holes drilled into the side of the case, distance varied by over an eighth of an inch even on the intake port holes of any one engine so intake timing and duration was quite random.

Like somebody already said, the Loutrel had a brass baffle plate to keep the exhaust gasses and heat out of the intake... the GHQ didn't.


So, with all that randomness working against getting a running engine, you can still imagne that some still came out OK. Either way, removing the randomness will make them work. I don't remember how to find him, but they guy who will rework GHQs is named Ray Baker. I remember that he lives in Ohio and is a MECA member, but I haven't seen him recently. I remember him flying his GHQ-powered GHQ Sportster in the '98 nats, to make the point that the engine does work if it's built up like an engine rather than like a tin toy. He's probably your best bet if you want a running GHQ.

multimike

Thanks Al, I will post a picture as soon as I can Mike

50+AirYears

A collector in my area has two, one runs, the other doesn't. The one that does run was EXTENSIVELY reworked. Since this fellow is a tool & die man, he made a cylinder liner and a new piston, and also had to rework the crank. When finished, he could turn a 13" prop at almost 5100. Said his Loutrel was much better. However, he traded the Loutrel for a Morton M5 NIB kit.

multimike

That was exactly what this guy did, he is machinist, he aguired the castings and then made all the rest, I hope to have pictures soon Mike

gnome

Interesting. I have two GHQ's one has the tin piston the other the cast iron. they have been in storage for over 60 years. Cranked those buggers till I was ready to drop and that was when I was a healthy kid.. It never ocurred to me to try to run it clockwise.Nobody around who knew anything abou model engine as far as I knew.AnyhowI could get the iron one to pop once in a while but it never ran. Finally gave up and got an O=R 19. Theone with the iron piston looks a little diferent than the oter one. I'm thinkin i might get them out and give it anoter go using all the tips from you fellows. Thanks for the info.

multimike

I think maybe several things have helped BIll get his running, the big one is the electric starter, I still have not seen him hand crank it, I also asked him about the direction of rotation and he says that it made little difference, he also agrees that ONE of the main culprits was those intake port holes being so badly drilled, he showsd us an original engine and it looked like they were hand drilled, he made a new crank, new piston and sleeve, I am still waiting to get some pictures of it running and flying the plane, good luck Mike

dicknadine

brings back memories. wore a out couple of electric wash machine motors out trying to get my GHQ running, then I got rich and bought an early Brown Jr.$10.50- which I still have--froze up-- some place in one of the piles. dick

multimike

Hey Dick, it sounds like those engines were good for something after all, MEMORIES good and bad, sounds like you use the same filing system I do " File by pile " works for me unless the boss ( wife) decides to "tidy" up my shop LOL Mike

Jim Messer

My Feedback: (2)

With a new crank, a new piston, and a new sleeve - this engine can hardly can be classified as a GHQ anymore. Time to give it a new name - like GHQMO - GHQ Made Over. A real GHQ will not run - period! I and a lot of other modelers learned that lesson years ago.