Tee Dee 049/051 Collets and backplates now in stock

The pressure nipples are relatively inexpensive to manufacture. However, I question whether we can sell 1,000 of those in, say, 5 years.

Bundle them with your TD 049 when it comes out as an included optional part. It comes with a normal back cover, and a pressure tap one. There is no reason to limit yourself to packaging and including items the exact way cox did in the old days. Why make them a separate item? Add a bit to the cost of the engine to cover their manufacture, and yes, I think you will have a market for 1000 of them.

I'd settle for a new crank and case. I think I'll buy myself a Tee Dee cylinder for my birthday. Keeping my Tee Dees alive is more important than any of my reedies. They're the workhorses of my Coxes.

MeerschaumSteve wrote:Bundle them with your TD 049 when it comes out as an included optional part. It comes with a normal back cover, and a pressure tap one. There is no reason to limit yourself to packaging and including items the exact way cox did in the old days. Why make them a separate item? Add a bit to the cost of the engine to cover their manufacture, and yes, I think you will have a market for 1000 of them.

Right now we are trying to find ways to reduce the cost of a potential TD engine, not increase it. As it sits now we are looking at a retail price of $80 - $85 and that is without an OEM looking box and without wrenches.

I can't see us selling 1,000 bare-bone TD engines for $80, even over a few years. Adding a nipple (as a loose part) would add another $3 to the retail price. There are $100 TD's on eBay all day long and those are original Cox in the box, with wrenches and instructions.

This whole Tee Dee engine project is not looking that good

Given a choice between an OEM original for $100 or a re-pop for $80 then I would do the $80 one all day long.

All the NIB ones bought on Ebay will probably stay NIB. There is no guilt in flying a new Cox International one. You will sell 1000.

Also....... If folks are Paying $75 for a limited production reedie than an an extra $5-10 for a front rotory valve that performs better isn't much to swallow.

Ron

The USED Tee Dee engines go for about $50 plus shipping on Ebay. Frequently more, sometimes less.

His direct competition on a front rotor engine would be Brodak's MKII .049 at $60 for CL or free flight, and $70 throttled. However the engine cannot be changed from non-throttled to throttled and back.

The other competition is NV engines, formerly Norvel, with 2 control line or free flight offerings at $55, no throttle option.

I am not sure who else is making production .049 engines.

It is nice that the engine can be switched from throttled to not throttled and back by replacing a few parts. This concept isn't a big sell for many people.

Phil

There is one thing I've never understood regarding the design of the backplates, why are the cut-outs for the tool round instead of square? It's just asking for the tool to slip out...

I'm curious as to how brodak and norvel can make their engines so cheaply, and its impossible for CoxInt to manage to do it. Are the other engines made in china or something?

From what I have seen the CoxInt quality is every bit as good as classic cox was. I wouldn't view their engines as reproductions, just modern editions of genuine Cox engines.

Surfer_kris wrote:There is one thing I've never understood regarding the design of the backplates, why are the cut-outs for the tool round instead of square? It's just asking for the tool to slip out...

I agree --- I expect that the design resulted from the production processes employed at the time. The slots were likely cut by an endmill coming in from the side rather than cutting across the back. Because much of the machine work was managed with screw machines, I can see why this might happen. With the CNC capability used in current manufacturing, cutting square slots would be of little consequence.

In any event, I usually use the edge of a flat file and square up the bottoms.

Cost of production of the Brodak line (I believe initiated in NA but produced in China). Norvel or some other former soviet union (USSR) examples like Cyclon or Profi are manufactured in factories that were government/military subsidized, had/have very low labor rates, little to no EPA restrictions, and use repurposed tooling or foundry equipment.

No way for North American company to compete at a price point that is profitable. Bernie has posted several times in several threads about the cost of tooling alone requiring a part of assembly needing to sell over 10,000 items to break even. They have marketing experiance that suggests selling 2000 to 5000 per year is about max the currnet market for Cox based items will draw.

If every member here committed to 5 new TD .049s, they still have to sell a whole bunch more per month on E-bay and other methods. Quality control adds to the problem as it is labor intensive, warranty returns must be accounted for, and fickel buyers always have a desire for variations which adds complexity to assembly and packaging.

As much as I would love to support Bernie and Matt, ultimatly I am a frugal retiree. A Cox TD .049 or .051 can be easily acquired for $50~$75 for new or lightly used on E-bay and here on the forum. They satisfy my glut to acumulate working engines (I am NOT a collector). Also, through other folks experiances, I acquired a few Norvel and Brodak engines which I consider very good quality, cheaper, and bettter preforming. (I know, not PC for the Cox Engine Forum)

MeerschaumSteve wrote:I'm curious as to how brodak and norvel can make their engines so cheaply, and its impossible for CoxInt to manage to do it. Are the other engines made in china or something?

I don't think the pricing is that different. Both the Brodak and NORVEL engines are made in eastern Europe, not China. The Brodak .049 C/L is $60 and the NORVEL .061 C/L is $70. Although the COX case starts out as an extrusion, it requires extensive machining to reach its final form; the Brodak and NORVEL engines have cast crankcases that require very little additional machining. The ball and socket used by COX is really a non-standard design and requires an assembly technique not needed in the typical conrod/wrist pin/piston configuration.

Secondly, Brodak and NORVEL offer engines in multiple displacements and configurations. The manufacturing plants are already in production, so tooling up for a particular engine type is less expensive. It's not like setting up for a run of 1000 engines, then gettng back to building diesel injectors, for example.

Lastly, you really need to consider the potential market for small glow engines. The majority of small plane enthusiasts have gone electric, so investing in a run of COX engines, particularly with used or NIB engines on the auction sites, is a risky endeavor.

andrew

In answer to the various posts:

I cannot speak to Norvel but Brodak makes runs that are substantially higher than 1,000 at a time. CS engines in China initially made their engines and John Brodak subsequently moved the production to Russia due to the hit-and-miss CS Engines quality.

If we made 5,000 TD engines we could likely get the retail price down to about $50 - $60, with an acquisition cost of around $25.

Five thousand engines at $25 is a capital outlay of $125,000, far outstripping our yearly profit. Even if this 3-person, mom-and-pop, operation had such coin lying around, I can assure you that I would rather invest it in, say, dozens of smaller projects with higher margins.

We sell about 3,000 reedies/year @ $25 to $50. Adding a TD engine will decrease reedie sales. The gain, on a net profit basis, would not be very much. Even at a $60 retail price I seriously doubt we could sell more than 1,000 engines/year. For us to invest $125,000 and wait 3 years to turn a profit is not a palatable choice.

The reason we can sell reedies at such low pricing is because we bought 35,000 of them from Estes at super-low pricing.

If Hobbico (the present owner of the Cox brand) had seen any potential in making TD engines, they would have (the have the Cox tooling). However, they are smart and invest their money in growing trends, not in decreasing ones.