consultation: valves (Cox Pee Wee 020)

Marleysky wrote:I like the '66 Ford Mustang 2+2 Fastback....but like Copper Reed valves, they are not made anymore, and the replacements may or may not be a improvement!
     
In my search for the Holy Grail of Copper Reed valves I received these responses:

Ex Model Engines:

assume you a speaking to the 049 sized engines. The beryllium copper reeds are long out of production. The production costs for nostalgic purposes are cost prohibitive due to the tooling required. We currently offer both the mylar and stainless steel reed valves, which perform consistent and provide quality performance in the oval shape.  Some of our customers feel the stainless steel will be a little more consistent when starting the engine. We use the mylar reed in all of our engines as it provides for the best all around performance, especially when modifying the engine for a higher-performance applications. We have not performed any documented test results for a side-to-side comparison.

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Best Regards, Matt



Cox International:

We do not have any of the star-shaped copper reeds, sorry.

Several decades ago Cox discontinued the copper beryllium reeds as they were found to be unreliable, especially at high RPM; where they were subject to “reed-float”, causing the engines to surge. Cox later replaced the reeds with the Mylar ones; which are far superior.

Thank you

Theresa

I liked the cooper reeds, they were the ones I grew up on as a kid. I know they are a bugger to try and clean, more than likely to get bent in half in a attempt to wipe clean.  I do have some of the 020 size Mylar star reeds....tiny little things that like to pop off the retainer and disappear!!  I am not a speed or race engine builder so I don't pay much attention to if I'm getting 17,000 or 18,590
RPM .......I'm just happy to have the little engine run!!  

PS: my secret method to accumulate a small stash of copper reeds was to buy a bunch of engines off from That Auction site

There are some technically advanced people on this forum that have the machines that can reproduce these reeds out of different materials. I have not been able to test the samples I received, but they do look like they should work just fine. Check out the Forum Store.

Marleysky wrote:I went back to Matt's site at Ex-Model engines, and it looks like he has some in stock for the PeeWee:
   
http://www.exmodelengines.com/product.php?productid=17538&cat=249&page=2