The R/C Bee, new to me and questions

By the way, USA modelers are lucky with Cox engines because you can find and buy every engine easily

It's this picture posted by George and written by Jacob that has me curious. It looks like something is ahead of the reed.

Bob, apart from your fantastic builds and resurrections, if you followed the discussion in the other thread, explanation was given. This is a development version prior to settling on a production version. It has no reed. The designer used the RR-1 rear rotary valve or facsimile of mounted in a special housing on the plastic tank. Looking closely, the "what finally became the reed housing" has a channel cut out on the top of the housing, where the air-fuel mix from the NVA and intake hole nearby on the top of the tank enters into the crankcase.
In essence what the designer was attempting to recreate was a modern muffled RC RR-1 with integral tank.

Unfortunately it never made it past testing stages (perhaps the results weren't as sparkling as hoped for) and the company decided on going to a reed valve version instead.

If it had made it, we would have seen a different story, a practical higher powered .049 engine with tank.


Seems after Leroy Cox sold his company to Leisure Dynamics, the Cox division was on a slow decline, including innovative designs (example, the series of Conquests) that never made it to production.

But, after seeing the boondoggle called the Queen Bee, made me wonder why they could not have instead come up with an upscaled .074 extruded crankcase Sure Start with lighter circular exhaust throttle ring muffler and radial mount, lighter in weight and more powerful. My 1965 Enya .09-III TV at similar weight is more useful as it can spin larger props with greater thrust.

I think this is why the Queen Bee was short lived. A heavier less powerful engine than others is never good. A.C. Gilberts and Testors Series 21 engines are good examples. Although fine engines, their extra weight limits the available airframes to put them in.
 

But, both you and @Kim have been able to turn sour apples into apple pie, as demonstrated in your abilities to turn things around by making underdog engines perform.

Fuel tubing looks like same length.

https://www.coxengineforum.com/t3351-cox-rc-bee

Sorry George, I'm so busy some days my feet don't hit the ground and I miss the fine print.

So the picture shows the development Bee? Is there a picture of the production version? Do you have a picture of the interior of your's? I just can't see that reed hung out there with no restraint as Levent's diagram shows.

Those throttle sleeves do not fit this cylinder. A first I thought a ridge on the bottom of the cylinder held it off but I removed any signs of one with 400 grit. Gave it a Berryman's soak and cleanup.










I would rob the throttle/muffler off the horse shoe, but that would make no sense if a part is missing.

Thanks for that side by side picture Levent. Guess the clunk is the right length.

Bob, my apologies. Apparently, those latest universal exhaust throttle rings were designed to fit the last iteration of the non-SPI cylinders. The R/C Bee used a completely different muffler, so they must have for some odd reason changed the outer cylinder diameter for their new exhaust throttle muffler with the silicon muffler cover.
(Some engineer wanted to make his mark on things? Shoot, I remember those days in the workplace. )

C-17 Different Size Engine Bolt Story (click to open):

This leaves one to replace the cylinder with a latter cylinder then to fit these throttle rings. I remember back in the 1970's, that Ace R/C sold two different throttle rings, depending on what year a cylinder was manufactured. One or the other fit the two most common available sizes.

The Sure Start cylinder because Cox added two boost ports on each bypass, is a slightly higher performance one than on the original R/C Bee, from what I gather. I'll have to pop the glow head off mine to have a look.

The good is, that if you were like a lot of others and picked up a couple Sure Starts when the Estes Cox side was closing for $7 plus shipping, perhaps one of those might work.

The bad is, as talk is cheap these days (sorry again ), YMMV - Your Mileage May Vary.

No problem George.  Evidently I missed the small print (and red arrow) on Levent's diagram too.  There is a ridge on the R/C Bees fuel tank that holds the reed securely in place that my old eyes missed.  Seems after I resolve the throttle/muffler problem I will have a fully functional R/C Bee.






All's right with the world now.  

I was going to add, Bob, that if you have a Tee Dee style cylinder with SPI that fits one of those unmuffled throttle rings, then you'd have a higher performance R/C Bee.

I took a screenshot just now about this before you solved the reed question:D

Thanks Levent, yeah, I finally got it.

I never showed you this picture.

rsv1cox wrote:Thanks Levent, yeah, I finally got it.  

I never showed you this picture.

Ooh, I'm honored!

Right up there with an actual piece of fabric from Amelia Earhart's Lockheed Vega.