COX snap starter spring with cam

Thanks Bernie,

I also checked some older catalogues and fliers of COX products and found the starter with CAM on older stuff. I thought it only dates back to Estes times.

There were two types of cam starters, the newer one used a hex prop drive. The springs are different dia. as well. The first cataloge I can find the red one is 1985 Cox Product Cat.
PDF in the instruction sheets in this site. It shows them on engines and models.

I bought my first Babe Bee in 1983 or very early 84, it has the red cam plate. Could bee that my bee had sat on the shelf for a while.

That 1985 catalog also shows metal backplates on all the tanked engines, I thought they were already plastic by then?

I agree with Bernie, I think they came out in the late 70's because if I remember correctly (maybe wrong since I was around 10 back then) my first PT-19 that I got as a kid in 1980 had the red (small hole) "snap starter" as Cox called it I had gotten it for Christmas which meant that it was bought during the 79 Christmas season. There is also a left hand version of the snap starter too.
Another thing, it's easy to retrofit the snapstarter on to older engines so it's possible that the starter was added.
(Bandit)

I'm glad I found this thread.. because I have both cam-styles in their OEM packaging. Both of mine are left-hand.. and they're both listed as CAT# 334.. I bought them from an old hobby shop that was closing its door a couple years ago.



The one shown on the left fits the round drive-plate (non-hex..) and has PT-19 old # handwritten on the price-sticker.

All of my left-hand cam-style units have "black" plastic cams. My right-hand cams are all grey-plastic.

I only have three Bee cases with hex drive-plates. One came on the engine in my 1987 PT-19, and one on my 1986 Cosmic Wind. Those years are listed at the bottom of the original instruction-sheets.. and list the company as "Cox Hobbies, Inc. 1525 East Warner Avenue, Santa Ana, California 92705. The third is a crankcase that I bought singly in 2012 from a company called "Mini-Glow Planes" in Tyler, TX. (just a bit of chronology)

Dave (TDBandit) mentioned his early (late 1970's) PT-19 having the "small-hole" (non-hex) type. It was likely a left-hand unit.. but I'm not sure about that. I thought that all the PT-19's used 6 x 2 L/H props.. but I could be mistaken. The first PT-19's had Babe Bee engines.. and were later re-designed to use the modular product-engine. I'm curious whether it utilized the "postage-stamp" backplate before the final horseshoe-style?