Cox Golden Bee

Hey Bob, Congratulations on sourcing another Cox Golden Bee engine! I have a soft-spot for them too! I've mentioned this countless times here on the forum.. but will mention it again because the post-title would warrant it.

I have "two" Golden Bee engines that were in my family since new. I don't know when they were purchased though. They are very different. Originally; the Golden Bee was configured as a Cox Babe Bee .049 engine with a stunt-vented tank of 3cc's larger. They had an air-intake of the same (.0625") size.

In later years; I found that one of them had a much larger air-intake. The engines had been taken apart.. and parts "mixed" with other reed-valve engines.. so unfortunately I lost traceability to the cylinder-porting between the two. I'm guessing that the cylinder-porting differed between the two.

Here's a couple of photos that compare the two tanks.. and their backplates..




The photo-example(s) show an enlarged air-intake on the right-hand side examples. When measured; it is .082". This has baffled me. This engine was not modified by my family. The gold anodizing can be seen down the throat of the venturi.. so it was not drilled-out.

My theory is; that some "later-model" Golden Bee's were hopped-up by Cox.. just preceding the release of the higher-performance "Black-Widow engine.

My example is probably very rare.. but you never know with Cox.