Let’s get this straight, the engine is NOT LEAKING OIL. The fuel is a mixture of lubricating oil and a highly flammable component. In my day, the 1950s, we used castor oil for the lubricant and kerosene and ETHER for the flammable bit. In those days you could go to a Pharmacy, in England they were knows as just Chemists shops, and as long as you had a laboratory bottle with a ground glass stopper you could buy 8 ounces of ETHER. Some times the Chemist would ask what you wanted it for and you would say that it was for model airplane engine fuel, there was rarely a problem. The fuel was a mixture of equal parts Castor oil, Kerosene (Paraffin in England) and ETHER. The engine burned the Kerosene and the ETHER and the Castor oil was just splashed all over the internal moving parts of the engine. The Castor Oil was NOT consumed and was just blown out of the exhaust port and as others have said it ended up coating the front of the plane. I never had this kind of engine which was know as a Glow-plug engine, the battery was used to get the plug glowing until the engine started to run. Then the heat of the combustion kept the plug glowing without the battery, the fuel formula for these engines was slightly different from what I have described. My engines were DIESEL engines and did not require a glow plug, they did have a mechanism which enabled you do adjust the compression at the top of the piston stroke. This was always VERY TRICKY to get right and resulted in many banged up fingers as you had to adjust a screw at the top of the cylinder while the engine was running. Young fingers and propellers running at 8 to 10,000 RPM do not mix without PAIN. Good heavens all this happened almost 70 years ago, I can barely believe it. But it was GREAT FUN, my mother stayed in the house not wishing to see the carnage that she confidently expected to occur. Good job I never told her about the Gun Cotton that I used to make. I used to test the quality of the gun cotton by placing a small amount on the concrete floor of the workshop and hitting it with a hammer. SPECTACULAR RESULTS, until one day the gun cotton literally blew the head off the hammer which then crashed straight through the glass of the workshop window. I do not remember how I explained that one. Best wishes, stay safe and thanks for the memories, didn’t someone else say that?
Nitro Methane and castor oil I had the golden bee and the scar on my index finger to prove it. My father and grandfather were scared shi_less to go back home to his mother-in-law and his wife.
Oil is getting everywhere outside the engine so it is leaking The model works but its a terrible design to have oil just leak all over the place from the combustion chamber vent. it would be better if it didn't need oil in the fuel and self lubricated from a oil reservoir.
DarkShadowsX5 These are TOYS, not professional engines. These engines have been around since WWII, the6 are very cheap devices. When I first used these engines in the 1950s they cost less than the equivalent of about $10. WHAT DO YOU EXPECT.
@@darkshadowsx5949 Don't you get that these are Model engines? Yes there do exist cleaner running engines, ones that run on actual gas and 2 stroke oil, but they have to be much bigger to do so. Does this thing look big to you? I doubt it's bigger than my steam engine, seriously, this things is TIIIINY. Of course it would be better if it didn't need so much oil in the fuel. But we don't live in a perfect world do we? We have to make compromises. This one means smaller, lighter engine. Can't do that with a 4 stroke which would need valves, a cam shaft and many other additional things that add weight and size.
@@darkshadowsx5949 I do really wonder why you are not mentioning that in a model plane is no place for a person... normally the engine is used with some sort of an exhaust pipe so the oil will not mess up the motor. btw A leak is something where something is leaving a system, where it is not designed to. The exhaust is designed to let gas and oil out of the combustion chamber. So it is NOT a leak.
My hair, my clothes and body used to reek of the exhaust from these little engines. Just hearing this video, I can smell it again! The summers I remember most.
I remember these Cox engines as a kid. Even though I haven't had one in 45 years, just watching this I could smell the fuel and exhaust again!!! Cool video!
Exactly. Funny thing for me is, I thought these little buggers where still in production. Strange that our child hood toys have become RU-vid novelties. I remember cutting grass and delivering newspapers all summer in order to purchase a fly by string Cox powered Messerschmitt bf 109. Completely destroyed it on it's first flight. Oh well.
Bruce Johnston Took mine to school and started it in the classroom at lunch, to impress girls. Quickly found out, my teacher WAS NOT impressed at all...
Watching this brought back a flood of memories. For a moment I imagined the exhaust smell coming from my cox .049 plane as I would tune the needle valve before running out to the control line to put it in the air.
Quadcopter 101 I used to myself fly the .049 Cox planes when I was a kid back in the 70’s. Now fly $2000 60cc gas airplanes and the Cox airplanes will always be my best memories.
childhood memories!!! the planes, the cars and the always burnt out glowheads!!!! lol wouldnt trade a day of them tho!! Oh and the smell of castor oil....great video, can almost smell it running!! thank you for sharing.
As a kid, I played around with these engines all of the time. I really enjoyed tearing them down, and rebuilding them. I had control line airplanes (Cox, and balsa models with the Cox engines), a Cox 3-wheeled motorcycle, and even a flying saucer with one of these engines.
@@kestonramdeo8419 Diesel fuel. Cox engines ignite the fuel with glow rings. Just like diesel engines ignite fuel with glow plugs. There is no spark plugs, so no glow ring, no ignition. Don't waste your time if you don't have a glow ring in it, a 9 volt battery, and use diesel (or Cox engine fuel). It won't run without all of those. Understand that gasoline and diesel are different in that gasoline does not ignite when pressurized. Diesel fuel does. But it has to be brought up to a certain temperature before it does. That's where the glow plugs or ring comes in. Initially, they start the engine by glowing hot electrically and compressing (pressurizing)the fuel (spinning the prop) Once the engine is running, the glow plugs stays hot by itself and the engine runs. Unplug the battery from the glow ring. Ever see what happens when you hit a can of WD-40 with a sledgehammer? DONT DO IT. WD-40 is mostly diesel fuel. In the can, it's already compressed. Another sudden compression increases the temperature past a flashpoint and BOOM!! There's a video of it in RU-vid somewhere.
Agree - I wanted to hear that hi-pitch whine instead of that insane stupid music. When I heard that whine in my youth in the early 50's I would run like the wind to find the source. Of course I knew what it was. COX/ OK/ FOX
I put one of these on a $5,00 Styrofoam glider from walmart, tossed it around a bit without running, to set elevator & balance, fired it up, and off it went, up into the great blue yonder. found it in the cornfield 2 miles away... (was an 040)
"the battery was used to get the plug glowing until the engine started to run. Then the heat of the combustion kept the plug glowing without the battery" ... a pessoa q teve essa ideia é um genio ...
thank you. would you be able to share some more infomation? -how does the chamber gain gas? an how push out burnt gas? -is it open chamber and gas keep pumped in after exhaust? and remaining gas at exposion be used for oil for moving parts? -is it 2 cycle ? up(intake-compress) down(explode-exhaust) Thank you Sir.
@@igobrave1076 The fuel is drawn up the cylinder wall past the piston-notice there's no piston ring. Exhaust gas exits out the obvious port. Fuel/air mix is controlled by the Venturi valve at the front of the engine. Very simple. On this engine the glow plug comes as part of the cylinder head.
Garry Brpwine I had a TESTORS ,049cc, but 9 out of 10, it always ran backwards, so was NEVER on a plane, but my others were English, DIESELS A MILLS 1.3cc, then an ED 2,46cc, , and an ED 3,46 cc Hurricane, it would have been 25 or so years later, when in USA, that had glow plugs, 4, FOX .35cc engines, but used 2 volt plugs, and 2.2 volt wet cell battery, all u control planes.
I bought one of those right after they came out, early 80's as I recall. Sadly I got sick and was off work for about a year with no income, so I had to sell off all those things just to survive. I WISH I STILL HAD IT!
What great memories this brings back!! I just wish you could transmit smell to us! Shortly after I would get it running, I was cleaning mud and debris from the engine, never mastered string flight! Thanks for posting.
Cox made these for about three decades. I've had a number of them over the years. I have never heard of them being recalled. They made millions of them. Most popular size was .049 c.u., but they also made .020, .010, .074 and .090.. Can't recall all the sizes, but they made a lot of them. You used to be able to buy them in every hobby store.
Of course, these engines work, I have used them for 40 years! These were the first engines made using CNC Machining in mass production. Many model airplane hobbyists started with engines in this series. The most popular being the .049 displacement series. 0.010, 0.020, 0.049, 0.051, 0.090. 0.15 displacements were available. There may have been a 0.074 even. There were even Conversion Heads available
I had a .09 Tee Dee on a 2.5m (98") motorglider. And it was balsa and ply construction, covered in Monokote, not this foamie rubbish that people play with today.
It seems that the author of the video talking about his .010 engine as if it was a new and fantastic invention. He may have been born yesterday but like you, i also remember the TD line of these little engines as I had several of them including .051 and the .074 for my cl airplanes. I wish I still had them today. Reading all of these comments was like a walk through memory lane and nothing to do with the video.
I remember building a small sled out of my Erector Set back in the 1950's. I put "outriggers" on each side. A thin layer of sheet metal gave the bottom surfaces a flat area. Then I took one of these Cox engines and mounted it on the back. (Think "swamp boat pusher"). I grew up on a farm so I had plenty of outdoor space available. After a snow, I would put this little contraption down on some hard-packed snow and it would go like the blazes. I had not considered the possibility that one of the outriggers might catch in the snow but that is what happened. That turned out not to be a bad thing, however. When one of them would snag on a little high-spot on the snow, it would immediatly spin my sled, sending it off in a new direction. Do much fun! Thanks for bringing back the memory! 😅 😂 🤣
Herr Unsinn, I did the same thing using the same size motor. I mounted it on a wooden cheese box (Yes at one time cheese came in a small wooden box). For skis, I used the standard white flat metal curtain rods. They worked great and as you described as the sled would hit a bump, it would instantly change direction. I used to get the great laughs just watching it go. Great memories.
I'm 19 and always was fascinated by models and RC stuff. My jaw dropped when I saw that and made the instant decision to get one. Needless to say prices have gone crazy but I got mine, runs very well and the satisfaction of owning such a cute thing was worth it. So weird to read comments of people who grew up in the 50s... I felt nostalgic of an era I wish I was born in !
We used these on small control line airplanes in the late 60's and early 70's. Lots of fun. The .049 size was the most popular small engine. Then we moved up to .35 .40 .60 ect. Had to wear leather gloves to start them. Nice childhood memory. Thanks
A 15 was a 2.5 cc. couldn't wear gloves, they tended to get caught up. When someone asks " doesn't that hurt? " you just hold up a hand with one finger down, 'hiding' it and say " you don't notice after the first one." I've got one .049 but never used it, had one earlier but it was stolen. I think I have somewhere a .01, a couple of 15's, a 30 or 35, a 40 and a 45 ( 7.5 cc ). I built a propeller driven car, started with a 15 with a manual throttle, a lever attached to the front of the deck working the throttle and a couple of springs on the front axle in case it hit a rock or something. you start it up and let go. it would drive around in circles until it ran out of fuel ( methanol and oil ) or it hit something. One day it was heading towards a parked car so I tried to grab it, hand hit the front axle which moved out of the way and thumb hit the top of the prop. Blood everywhere. rebuilt that car with the 45 but RC controls.
@@TCSC47 Google "#30 Cox .010 Tee Dee Engine (Cox Box)" That'll take you to the Cox engines site. Price is $249. When I was a boy they were.. $30. But that wasn't yesterday!
@@evildrome Are these leftover stock? £249! Wow. The problem with items like this is that it is all us old guys wanting them from our childhood so it is a sellers market. When we die off the price will drop! Have to add LOL!
It's not the same today for the most part. Back then , castor oil was used for lubricant and that is what gave it its distinctive smell while burning. Now, synthetic oils are used and it does not have the same nostalgic smell. However, some premium fuels use a blend of castor and synthetic
There was this wood protector for the firewall called "Dope". Nasty smelling stuff, but several coats of that stuff preserved the wood from the castor oil.
Back in 1975 I used to have a COX PT-19 Plane that had similar engine, 0.049 cu-in with a glow plug and same spring starter. The flying model had control line. Good old days 😌
Irfan I had one too. It was a blast to fly. I was the youngest of five boys but I was the first to do a succesful loop with a line controlled airplane in my family. Thank God we didn't have computers back then. Think of the fun we probably would have missed out on.
Yes it is probably the smallest glow fuel model engine but as far as I know the smallest model aero engine is the Valentine Nano Bee 0.006 c.c. (0.00037 cu in), which is a compression ignition engine or "diesel" as aero-modellers like to call them.
Hello friend, I am 79 years old. Since I was 15 years old I am a model airplane practitioner in all its facets. I started with “circular flight” and currently I fly everything that flies; motor sailplanes, sailplanes without motor, glow motors, electric motors, glow and electric helicopters. With 65 years of modeling, I think I have nothing left to discover. When I turned 60 I took out the ULM pilot title and flew successively in Quick Silver, Tecnam P92 and Tecnam Sierra. The doctors forced me to fly with a security pilot due to cardiac issues and desperate, I left him selling my Tecnam Sierra. I only fly model airplanes and, by the way, with all the experience accumulated last September 13, a Sukhoi propeller cut two fingers at the root of my nails. I know very well the stories you tell me because I have lived them. Regards.
The little .049 was a great engine used on model planes in the 50's & 60's. 👍👍👍 Glow plug ignition, then it ran like a diesel!!! Sure did get a lot of "whacked" fingers!! 🤕😨
These little Pee Wee engines were so easy to work on and started with just one spin of the prop. Adjusting the engine speed was a simple turn of the screw next to the fuel filler pipe. We also fitted them to flat bottom model boats and had great fun...
That small airplane motor has been around since 1955! It’s nothing new or spectacular. What he does here, my friend, Dale, and I used to do this on a weekly basis. And when anyone buys one, buy a half dozen(6) glow plugs, don’t ask! And we had sore fingers from starting it, we had no spring starter, great invention. And they make a great battery clip for starting, but this guy evidently likes hot fingers.
What you are seeing is the reflection of the glow plug element in the cylinder head. It is the high temperature of the heat of the filament that ignites the fuel. The engine does get hot but certainly not that hot!
I purchased one of these .010 when it came out, still have it, mine is red. There is also the mount for external fuel tank. My father was ham radio operator and we built small radio control plane. It flew long time with that engine. Thanks for good video.
Mine was red, too. Well, the fuel tank was. PeeWee Thistle Drome model, or something like that. I spoke no word of English then, so I might misremember.
@@wafikiri_ Hi, Mine was red also, maybe from 1970-1972, The engine nickname was the TEE DEE .010. And the other word was Thimble Drome. Yeah, airdrome-aerodrome, a thimble is small so it is like a classing scale. If you notice in some of their ads and packages, you can see a plane flying out of a thimble. Fun times.
@@watcher818 Thimble Drome, thanks! I'm pretty sure my engine's model was Pee Wee. So they had a series of similar models. Interesting. Mine was .010 too. It took me two years to get it started. The instructions said to turn the throttle screw 2.5 turns outwards, and I tried many other settings. Finally I got it at 22 turns.
I had a few of these cox .049 aircraft and car engines when I was a kid. Very reliable, but fussy when starting, and idling, but would run all day with plenty of model engine fuel. Most of them didn't have a carburetor, but a Reed valve in the fuel tank with an adjustable pin for fine tuning. This is an improved model with a carburetor.
its not really a carb, just a needle valve in a venturi, but this model has a rotary valve instead of read valve. They are only fussy is you don't set them up correctly (right amount of prime fuel/compression/glow power), I had mine down to one flick of the prop to start. I also modded my black widow/golden bee's to go from 18,000 rpm to 25,000 rpm by increasing sub port induction, this was on 10% nitro..
my favorite babe bee (.049) mod from back in the day was to drill a hole in the plastic tank mount/plate and plumb the internal tank pickup to an external 5 Oz. nitro-meth tank. I never had to go after my air boat in the water again. You would get bored before running out of fuel.
@Dave Micolichek Not arguing with you. I remember contemplating if it needed a cool down period and if the attached tank helped keep it cooler for the duration of the run. I simply decided it was worth the risk so I didn't have to keep swimming through duck crap to go get the boat when it unexpectedly ran out of fuel. That was at least 25 years ago and I bet I could go soak it in solvent for a day or two to get rid of the nitro-meth cocoon it is currently in and it would fire up.
Surely the definition of a carburettor is it a device to mix the fuel and the air in the right proportions for combustion. That is exactly what the needle valve and venturi does on all these engines thus they are carburettors.
At 5:05 love the simple glo plug powering. That was always the problem when I was a kid. Flat batteries. This vid shows me how far battery technology has come in 60 years (Oh dear, that long!!!?)
Oh yeah. I remember when we did this long ago. We used a "dry cell", which was an enormous (like 2 1/2 inches diameter by 8 inches high) 1.5V battery and the things didn't last that long.
@@soaringvulture That battery was probably a gas-lighter battery, with a big screw thread around the top. These gas-lighters used a glowing filament (rather like a glow plug) to ignite the gas on your cooker. It worked well with the old "town gas" that was made from coal and consisted mainly of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, but it would not ignite the natural gas (methane) that replaced town gas in the UK around 1970. This large 1.5v cell disappeared from the market after that. Other batteries used for starting glow engines were the AD4 and AD34, which had four and eight (respectively) cells each the size of a large torch cell, all connected in parallel. These batteries were intended for heating the valve filaments of pre-transistor portable radios, so they were also disappearing by the 1970s.
Correct fuel for this the Cox TD 010 glo engine is 30 % nitromethane, 30% degummed castor oil and 40% methanol. Same fuel for all Cox TD racing series engines. TD glow heads all rated at 1.5v but TD's can usually be started on 1.2v. First series TD 010's had gold anodised crankcases and red plastic moulded parts. Second series natural finish crankcase and black plastic parts. Very good idea to disconect the fuel tube from the tank's plastic outlet before storage as the chlorine released from the tube material over the decades will attack the acetal tank material. Common TD 010 and 020 problem.
aeroearth? Hi! I was poor, so I only ever ran mine on a maximum of 3% nitro [three percent was all I could afford], and that was when using an 049 on a pod to lift a big RC glider. For free-flight with an 020 I'd use regular straight fuel - all my little Cox glow engines ran happily on it for many years. Amazingly high quality little bits of engineering. A glow head lasted a full 11month season for me. (I'm based in England; there's usually one unflyably stormy month in a year - but it's as likely to be in summer as in the depths of winter...) I found that the engines needed very little maintenance if kept clean; I hated stiff neoprene fuel tubing, and switched to silicone at the first opportunity. I still have a couple of unopened spare glow heads left from 1978! I loved everything about my tiny engines but the noise... :-)
Had a bunch of these little engines. Most of the airplanes crashed. Remember loving the smell of the fuel. No computers in the 1960s, simple pleasures.
I still have two of them. A Peewee 0.020 and a Teedee 0.049. Have not run them for many years. Crashed many of the plastic ones and balsa control line models as a youth. Had a 0.049 Baby Bee with a tank extender on a 36" wingspan model and with a full fuel load it flew in a huge circle and out of sight almost. When it finally ran out of fuel I guestimated it was up 3000 feet and glided straight North East of us and never found it. Still have two scars on my finger to this date. Those days were great fun for us kids and still remember that last flight.
I was thinking the same thing! Mine lasted a year before I retired it. It had a tendency to smack the ground at speed. My planes flew on control lines, connected to a control horn. Thanks for posting this video! It brings back some great memories! 👍😁👍
Still I have the Cox 0.049 that I used 50 years ago with a little U-control plane I made witk balsa wood. The only thing that that plane had doing was flying in circles surrounding me. After few minutes , the fuel finished and the plane landing, fully dirty of oil. Today , no child is happy playing to that. Regards from Argentina.
This answers my question that I've always had. If you were to shrink down a car to the size of a hot wheels car will the engine still work as intended? I mean it doesn't actually answer it but like it makes me feel like that any engine can run no matter the size as long as it's properly machined.
There is a passage from the crankcase up into the cylinder. As the piston travels downward, it pressurizes the crankcase forcing the fuel and air mixture up into the cylinder.
It is a basic 2 stroke engine. I have a collection of these. Cox screwed up by not focusing on their last 0.51. A real muffler and carburetor. I could only get one.
In the TeeDee engines the crankshaft is hollow, and there is a hole ground through the crankshaft right under the venturi that acts as a timing port and admits fuel/air mixture into the crankcase as the piston goes up in the cylinder, As the piston goes down, it pushes the mixture through bypass ports in the sleeve, around the piston and into the combustion chamber. The piston acts like a valve, opening and closing the bypass and exhaust ports. Pretty standard 2 cycle stuff. The cheaper Cox engines used a reed valve to admit the mixture into the crankcase instead.
Wait a second. This is nothing new. I had these thingd in the 70s. Exactly like this one. We didn't have video games. We use to play outside with other actual people. And fly real planes. Climb real trees. Breath real air. This is like doing a video on the rediscovery of matches.
My name is Anthony littlebear, and I’ve recently had three major strokes, which makes me more or less brain dead, but I want to start building these little motors I think they are so awesome, can you tell me what I might need to get started? Thank you in advance🙏🏼
Those little Cox motors spew more fuel than they burn, every time I flew something with one I had to have a bottle of windex and a roll of paper towels because the plane would be coated in nitro
Sad that the Cox company is no more. They were for a while part of Estes of Penrose Colorado. You know, the model rocket people, which still exists. What do kids do these days for fun? Phones or Pads cannot compare to the sound, smell, busted fingers, wrecked and rebuilt planes, and the stories to tell of line control or RC hobbies.
You need nitro glow fuel: 65% methanol; 20% castor oil ;15% nitro-methane. This little beast likes nitro-methane and it will scream at around 30,000rpm on 25% nitro.
