The weekend holiday here has been something of a wash due to the high wind speeds. It make it not worth trying to fly a RC model when the winds are 25mph and gusting to 40. So far this year, it has been super windy all most all the time. Especially on my time off.

So today, I took care of my RC fix needs and bench ran my venerable 1980's vintage Fox .45 wart engine. I had actually bought the engine fromFox many years ago when I visited their Fox Manufacturing factory in Fort Smith, Arkansas. It was a new engine, so I bench ran a few tanks of fuel through it to limber it up some and run it in for a while too. Then I put on my old style Davis Diesel Head so it could be a diesel engine now. I also replaced the old style butterfly carb with a new editionFox carburetor as well, as the new Fox 2 needle carb works really nice.

I am pretty impressed as to how well the Fox .45 engine ran as a diesel engine. It idled really well considering I hadn't added muffler pressure to it yet. It tended to be a little sluggish on the run up from idle, but I think that was more a function of it having to spin up the big heavy Haster Airscrew 12x8 propeller though. It might be a touch too rich on the low end, but it still ran pretty good as is though. The new Fox carb worked great.

When I first got ready to run the engine, I unscrewed the adjusting screw on the head, as it seemed to be down really low into the head. But when I started trying to start the engine, I would screw in the screw a little at a time, and eventually I wound up having the screw pretty much back to about where it was when I first opened up the package.

As a glow engine it turned a 11x6 Master Airscrew prop at 12,400 RPMs. As a diesel engine it turned a 12x8 Master Airscrew Prop at 9,400 rpms. It would idle as low as 2,100 RPMs well too. I used Davis Diesel fuel as well. I have a video clip of it running, but it is going to take a long time to upload it though. So I'll post it later, if anyone is interested.
As another thought, my old Saito .80 four stroke glow engine turns a APC 12x8 prop at a little over 10,000 RPMs, so the Fox .45 diesel is developing some pretty good power there in comparison to a larger 4 stroke engine.