Wonderful things! Wonderful things!

Well, I just got my latest eBay purchase in the mail today.  Four Babe Bees that don't work at all.  All four are gunked up and frozen.  Man! I just love, love, LOVE getting Cox engines that don't work and setting them to rights.  Anyone can get an engine that's in good condition. It takes a real tinkerer to buy the broke ones and bring them back to their glory days again.    I'd have asked for something like this for Christmas, but my wife doesn't understand why I'd want to get broken stuff as a Christmas present.

This is the picture from the auction, so I knew they'd be the fixer-uppers I wanted.  I paid $20 for all four.  About $5 more than I was hoping for, but at the upper end of what I was willing to pay for them:


Here they are lined up.  I've never had one with a crankcase like the one on the left.  From a car or boat, maybe?  I'll need to get a drive plate for it.


One engine had this on it, but I've never seen this before. It looks like it was used to engage the spring starter. Did any of the Cox planes need one of these for the spring starter because of an odd shaped prop or something?



I got three good metal backplates out of the four engines.  The previous owner torqued down on a screw too much on the right engine and broke the backplate.


But, that's okay.  I can swap the broken backplate with the one off of this engine I acquired a while ago, and use the broken backplate with the tank that has the hole drilled in it.  I can just use a counter-sunk 2-56 screw for the broken hole.


The Happy, Happy, HAPPY Mark