Super Tanker (30cc) Cox 049 Texaco

Brilliant fix, sosam117!
I never liked the idea if the engine depending
on the firewall to efficiently seal the tank(ala
the Dragonfly, Ranger and RC Bee).
Thanks for dat. Wished I had one of Sal's tanks
to modify.
Bob

Sorry, Sosam,
I just re-read your first post...there is the weight already listed.
*Facepalm*

My flying buddy has a poster in his shop of astronauts standing on the moon. One of them looking down says "Oh I was wondering where they all went". Around him was hundreds of free flight models. I'm quite certain that a 30 min engine run would be ridiculous. I can't offer more than 30 seconds in these parts.

dckrsn wrote:Brilliant fix, sosam117!
I never liked the idea if the engine depending
on the firewall to efficiently seal the tank(ala
the Dragonfly, Ranger and RC Bee).
Thanks for dat. Wished I had one of Sal's tanks
to modify.
Bob

One of Sal's Cox 020 tanks:




Sorry you missed out on the *bay auction. That was the last Sal Taibi Cox 020 tank that Mike Myers (kilmarykid) had.
He has other things for sale from Sal Taibi's estate. Check it out?
https://www.ebay.com/sch/kilmarykid/m.html?item=174475314416&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2562

I email Mike Myers about the cleaning and modification on the tank and this is his reply to me:

Now a story about that tank—and Mike’s significant improvement for  it.
Sal Taibi has been gone almost 8 years now (he died in December 2012).
But he made and sold tanks like that for almost all of the 30 years I knew him before his death.
The design was fairly constant—the tanks were to be used to allow you to set your engine up as a radial mount.
In order to bolt your engine on to the tank  you needed to get to the inside of the tank.
So the back plate of the tank (which was just a simple disc) fit inside the back of the tank and rested on a lip.
The gasket or  seal for that joint (at least as the tanks came from Sal) was a disc of yellow copy paper.
When you bolted the tank on to the airplane firewall, the disc was pressed tight—and the tank didn’t leak (in theory at least).     Some guys may have experimented with liquid gasket material to seal that backplate, but most of us just went with the copy paper “gasket” and bolting it tight to the firewall.

All that was fine if you didn’t have to make adjustments for  more right thrust or more down thrust.
I never saw Sal do what Mike has done—which is drill a hole in the disc, then drill and tap a hole to allow that disc to be snugged up with a 2-56 bolt.

Sal made those radial mount tanks for all kinds of engines—Ohlssons, Cox 049s, K&B Greenheads, Elfin 2.49 diesels etc, Tee Dee 020s etc. He’d make you a custom one for your Whizzbang Whatsit Special if that’s what you needed.
That radial tank amount solved a lot of plumbing and fuel draw problems—the tank was right there behind the engine.

But for me the neatest of them all was Sal’s tank mount for the Tee Dee 020.
We were flying a lot of 020 Replica in the 80s and 90s.
The Tee Dee 020 loved nitro and a kissor propylene oxide.
Al Heinrich at Aerodyne was mixing up “Dynomite” –and it was.
I loaned some to Terry Thorkildsen at the Reno Nats in 1984 and the Dynomite was good for 500 more rpm than he was getting on his “jungle juice”—which was maybe 50% nitro.  

But I hated the red plastic tank on the Tee Dee 020.
It would sometimes warp and leak out the back.
Because of the need to have some negative draft in the mold for the fuel nipple on the tank, the fuel line was always falling off.  And of course because those little Tee Dees loved high nitro fuel, the front end of your little bird was soon a mess if there was a leak.

Sal’s metal tank fixed that fuel nipple problem—your fuel line went on a small brass tube coming out of the tank and stayed there like the Thermal God Hung and Sal Taibi intended.
Even though those tanks didn’t have the McIntyre modification that Mike reports, they didn’t leak from the backplate any worse than the stock Cox tanks.
I don’t fly 020 Replica any more and I sold my last Taibi Tee Dee 020 tank mount on Flea Bay about a month ago.
But they were pretty nice little tank mounts.

Mike Myers

Sal Taibi's special made Cox 020 tank:


Mike Myers *Bay posting of Sal Taibi's Cox 020 tank: (already sold -- sorry   )
The stock Cox Tee 020 red plastic tank mount has an annoying problem.
The fuel delivery nipple tapers from the back to the front.
It has to do that because it's a plastic casting and they need to taper to "draw" it out of the mold.
That means that fuel leaks all over the front  of your airplane.
And since those little Cox Tee Dee 020s love high nitro fuel that messes up the finish on the front of your model.

Sal Taibi solved that problem with his own design fuel tank. It bolts to the back of the Tee Dee 020.
The fuel "feed pipe: is a piece of constant diameter fuel tubing.
The Taibi 020 fuel tank held more fuel (about 5cc or 8cc ask Sal for tank length?) than the stock Cox Tee Dee 020 fuel tank.

Sal passed away about 8 years ago (2012) and there haven't been any of these made for quite a while---they have become rare

Back plate with paper gasket inside tank.