The future of ic engines in our hobby.

[EarlyBird]

5 minutes ago, Rich Griff said:

? is a question mark by the way.

Correct, and your point is?

[PeterF]

Spent a lifetime designing methanol production plants, they typically produce 3,000 to 6,000 tonnes per day, but the minimum order quantity needs a small tanker (ship tanker not lorry tanker) to collect it with if you order direct.

[Rich Griff]

Hi eb, you posed a question as did I, more than once.

 

Many members on here also pose questions.

[EarlyBird]

6 minutes ago, Rich Griff said:

Hi eb, you posed a question as did I, more than once.

 

Many members on here also pose questions.

True and you also answered it for the first time.

Normally I expect a question mark to be used following a question but not a statement.

For example, Is the sun out? but you often make a statement like the sun is out? which I take to mean that you are not sure and do not expect a reply.

Looking at many of your posts they are littered with question marks usually following a statement that with your experience you should know and have no doubts about.

 

[EarlyBird]

Hmm @Rich Griffyet again you have taken us off topic.

[EarlyBird]

I have been all electric until recently due to my desire to build larger models and previously deciding that I did not want to go above 4S batteries. The future for me is Saito petrol engines.

 

Steve

[Rich Griff]

Hi eb, glad you have an IC engine, s petrol one at that !

 

If answering your question has resulted in thread drift, perhaps you should not have asked ?

 

Anyways, back to the future of our IC engines...it seems methanol is bring used to power ships !

 

They don't do 40 nautical miles to the ton, or do they ?

 

Balsa shortages/price hikes due to wind turbine blades....mmmm.

 

Enjoy while you can.

 

[Phil Green]

Never done the big stuff but my own favourite of all time is the humble Cox Babe Bee.  Ultra reliable, easy to start, easy to install, the option of running backwards in a pusher, still available to buy new in standard or custom format - whats not to love. Apart from the racket....  🙂

I found one of my several old ones, untouched for maybe 40 years - holding it in my hand I squirted in some prime, some in the tank and connected the glow head. It started immediately which left me with a screaming engine in my fingers which was getting hotter and greasier by the second...  I can be pretty dumb.

More recently I bought a new custom diesel Cox from Cox International (IIRC they were called 'Xenolook' at the time) and its been brilliant, though the teflon contrapiston needs changing frequently and its a bit more finnicky than the glow.  I might convert it back - just a case of swapping the head. 

Love Babe Bees.  EEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...
  

 

Edited April 7, 2024 by Phil Green

[leccyflyer]

Steve Webb tells a great story of a punter who phoned the shop as he was unable to get his engine started. Steve talked the guy through all the obvious step - fuel, air, glow etc and could hear the sound of a prop being flipped in the background. Eventually he heard the engine burst into life, followed shortly by "Oooh, ouch, ouch, ouch" then a clatter and the engine noise stopped. Steve asked the guy if he'd started the engine in his hand - which he had. It then turned out that he was in a phone box! 😮

[Rich Griff]

Great story leccy and extremely plausable.

 

Nice me Phil, bb's and bw's etc. can still be had, newish, dens model supplies in UK, Cox international as you say, exmodelengines and mecoa, buy mecoa is not very uk friendly it seems.

 

Silencers and rc throttles are available too.

 

The td09's I have can be heard in the next village unsilenced !

 

Would love a 15, in the style of td09, and/or any rC silenced Cox.

 

Only model I ever managed to set on fire ( only knew it was ablaze due to the heat ) was a Cox pt19 cl plane. Blew it out with no damage to me or the plastic

 

Would love one of those pt19's and a Stuka !

 

Mecoa may be making pt19's.

 

Cox model engine forum, Turbines....

 

Remember the reduced nitro rules in glow fuels, anyone ?

 

Happy landings out there.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 7, 2024 by Rich Griff

[EvilC57]

1 hour ago, leccyflyer said:

Steve Webb tells a great story of a punter who phoned the shop as he was unable to get his engine started. Steve talked the guy through all the obvious step - fuel, air, glow etc and could hear the sound of a prop being flipped in the background. Eventually he heard the engine burst into life, followed shortly by "Oooh, ouch, ouch, ouch" then a clatter and the engine noise stopped. Steve asked the guy if he'd started the engine in his hand - which he had. It then turned out that he was in a phone box! 😮

Reminds me of the story I heard when I worked in hi-fi retail (as a junior bench engineer) back in the mid 1970s. One of the salesmen told us of a customer he’d had on the phone who was keen to buy a particular pair of speakers, but wanted to listen to them first. Once he’d established the shop had them in stock, he asked whether the salesman could play them down the phone to him before he went to the trouble of making the journey.

Edited April 7, 2024 by EvilC57

[Phil Green]

To justify the topic wandering, what I'm saying is that although the Cox .049 is a really old engine from a nostalgic era, its still available brand new, so the future of Cox engines is secure - at least for now and for the life span of their new engines 🙂

[leccyflyer]

They are also available in abundance at every swapmeet, along with lots of other smallish glow engines. I think if there is to be a shortage any time soon, it will be at the larger capacity, more complex end of the market, which never sold in anything like the same numbers and will become increasingly rare as runners, as the spares run out and there isn't the same pool of scrappable engines for parts.

[john stones 1 - Moderator]

If the end of I.C lasts as long as the threads discussing the end of I.C, most of us will be long gone before it happens.

[Don Fry]

1 hour ago, leccyflyer said:

They are also available in abundance at every swapmeet, along with lots of other smallish glow engines. I think if there is to be a shortage any time soon, it will be at the larger capacity, more complex end of the market, which never sold in anything like the same numbers and will become increasingly rare as runners, as the spares run out and there isn't the same pool of scrappable engines for parts.

Not when we start falling off perches.

[Paul De Tourtoulon]

37 minutes ago, Don Fry said:

Not when we start falling off perches.

Norwegian Blues are still around, ask any MP fan.🤩

[Shaun Walsh]

Just now, Paul De Tourtoulon said:

Norwegian Blues are still around, ask any MP fan.🤩

Beautiful plumage,  only available in Notlob.

[David Davis]

5 hours ago, leccyflyer said:

Steve Webb tells a great story of a punter who phoned the shop as he was unable to get his engine started. Steve talked the guy through all the obvious step - fuel, air, glow etc and could hear the sound of a prop being flipped in the background. Eventually he heard the engine burst into life, followed shortly by "Oooh, ouch, ouch, ouch" then a clatter and the engine noise stopped. Steve asked the guy if he'd started the engine in his hand - which he had. It then turned out that he was in a phone box! 😮

 

I had a similar experience.

 

I used to live in North Devon. Every year at the end of the flying season, the Exeter Club used to hire a school hall and a caterer, and stage a giant auction. People came from miles around, there were usually over four hundred lots. I bought a diesel engine, I think it was a PAW 19 but I can't be sure. I brought it home, put a prop on it and squirted some diesel fuel into the exhaust ports. Casually I flipped it over and the damn thing burst into life! There I was standing in my kitchen with a model aeroplane engine screaming it's head off in my left hand and the kitchen rapidly filling with exhaust smoke. My immediate though was to chuck it in the sink but being a single man, the sink was full of dirty ditches! So I had to stand there holding the damned thing until it ran out of fuel. Of course, they get hot don't they, so it became increasingly more difficult to hold on to it. Fortunately it stopped before it became too hot to hold! 🙄

[J D 8 - Moderator]

   At a local museum [ Sunderland trust] support event last year our club attended, I ran the motor in my old CL Midget Mustang a Cox TD 051. Attracted much attention to our stand.

[Geoff S]

3 hours ago, David Davis said:

 

I had a similar experience.

 

I used to live in North Devon. Every year at the end of the flying season, the Exeter Club used to hire a school hall and a caterer, and stage a giant auction. People came from miles around, there were usually over four hundred lots. I bought a diesel engine, I think it was a PAW 19 but I can't be sure. I brought it home, put a prop on it and squirted some diesel fuel into the exhaust ports. Casually I flipped it over and the damn thing burst into life! There I was standing in my kitchen with a model aeroplane engine screaming it's head off in my left hand and the kitchen rapidly filling with exhaust smoke. My immediate though was to chuck it in the sink but being a single man, the sink was full of dirty ditches! So I had to stand there holding the damned thing until it ran out of fuel. Of course, they get hot don't they, so it became increasingly more difficult to hold on to it. Fortunately it stopped before it became too hot to hold! 🙄

 

One of our members, who used to run a model shop, had a customer complain that the engine he'd bought wouldn't start and he returned it for assessment. It checked out OK and the customer took it back, only to return it again as a non-runner.  When asked to demonstrate his technique in the shop he applied the glow supply and said "There you are, it won't start."  He didn't realise it was necessary to turn the engine over by hand or with a starter to get the suck/squeeze/bang/blow sequence to start.  How he thought his car engine started, I can''t think!

[Paul De Tourtoulon]

9 hours ago, Geoff S said:

 

One of our members, who used to run a model shop, had a customer complain that the engine he'd bought wouldn't start and he returned it for assessment. It checked out OK and the customer took it back, only to return it again as a non-runner.  When asked to demonstrate his technique in the shop he applied the glow supply and said "There you are, it won't start."  He didn't realise it was necessary to turn the engine over by hand or with a starter to get the suck/squeeze/bang/blow sequence to start.  How he thought his car engine started, I can''t think!

The same thing happened to me, I sold a Citroën 1/10 scale car to the Citroën garage owner, his wife came back and forth as it wouldn't start, eventually he came to my shop, he put the glow starter on the plug and said there you are it won’t start, obviously he hadn't read the instructions and wondered what the bit of string on the rear of the engine was for.

[911hillclimber]

Today, I went to the local model shop to buy a tin of diesel fuel.

No.

None available to them and no glow fuel either as an aside.

They cannot get stock.

 

Thus a 1/2 litre tin off ebay for £23.

 

Sobering.

[leccyflyer]

Leeds Model Shop is the place to get diesel fuel. They do next day delivery on the cans of Model Technics D1000, D2000 and D3000. Excellent service.

 

https://www.modelshopleeds.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=291_836&products_id=85620&osCsid=fr1og226uu520gi5qeve3ibbft

[Rich Griff]

Wow !

 

I have been using wheelspin in the past. Leeds model shop has been mentioned in the past as has the shop advertised in rcme, Weston's, but that contains no castor.

 

PAW recommend a weston's fuel but check.

 

Paraffin, castor, ether and a drop of ipn or similar 

 

John deer "easy start' has highest ether content.

 

Paraffin is available 

 

Paw used to do castor,

 

know any angina suffers ?

 

Leccy may have beaten me with his reply so no worries

 

Yuo may come across some reluctance to sending stuff via royal mail ( just like lipos ) but some carriers will send it 

 

Happy flicking, lots of burps and brrrrr's to come.

 

Been putting off reading this thread until engine is running 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 9, 2024 by Rich Griff

[PDB]

14 minutes ago, Rich Griff said:

PAW recommend a weston's fuel but check.

 

https://www.eifflaender.com/modellers-info

 

 

Available as linked above by @leccyflyer at Leeds Model Shop.

Edited April 9, 2024 by PDB