ATWOOD .049

I came across this 'ATWOOD' .049 in a flea-market for $15.00. It had an integral tank and a venturi with an NVA; still had good compression and looked in 'very good condition'. As I am not a collector I would only want it if it could be used. Any comments on this?

Thanks.

Those are good engines. Someone can fix you up with a non-tank backplate, I imagine. I used to fly Atwoods in preference to Cox products.

I think that I have a couple of spare "non-tank" backplates.
I will look in the junk bin if you want.

Bigiron

>I came across this 'ATWOOD' .049 in a flea-market for
>$15.00. It had an integral tank and a venturi with an NVA;
>still had good compression and looked in 'very good
>condition'. As I am not a collector I would only want it if
>it could be used. Any comments on this?
>
>Thanks.

The Atwood "Shriek" was a killer FF gas engine. A good one could stand up against the dominant Holland Hornet. A good Atwood in good condition is a good thing.

Andy

Only trouble is that the Shriek uses an unobtainable glow head. I bought one from MECOA and tried to get some spare heads but they don't have any. Knowing MECOA, they'll never make any either. Just like that Johnson .35 that has been in the works for 15 years.

>Only trouble is that the Shriek uses an unobtainable glow
>head. I bought one from MECOA and tried to get some spare
>heads but they don't have any. Knowing MECOA, they'll never
>make any either. Just like that Johnson .35 that has been in
>the works for 15 years.
>
>Steve

Ditto. I've asked for heads several times, and no Joy. My Shriek sits NIB on the shelf...

Andy

Does it have a "glow head" or use a standard short glow plug. If the latter, it's a "Wasp". I still have one; my first engine. Not a real high-performance engine, but easy-handling and reliable. Still runs after 50 years.

The Atwood "Cadet" was the low priced spread ($3.95?), and used a 1/4-32 glowplug. Nice little engine. Bill Atwood sold out to Holland, and Holland's (Bob?) first engine was the "Wasp", which used a normal glowplug. They appeared to be about the same as a Cadet, and coincidentally, the Wen-Mac. I don't know if the Wen-Mac was related to the Atwood 1/2a or not. Anybody know? Then came the Holland Hornet. A good high performance engine, but fragile NVA and equally fragile glowhead...a pain. Johnson bought out Holland, and made Hornets for awhile, but I don't think they sold too good. TeeDees got more press and better advertising. Also, sometime in the '50's or '60's, Bill Atwood went to work at Cox, in the R&D dept. The Conquest .15 (and maybe the Conquest .40?) were his last projects there. Steve

It is extremely hairy, as there isn't much metal to work with, but I managed on my 2nd try to modify a Wasp head to be a retainer for Norvel glow buttons. Works great!

I would pack the upper two fins with JB weld if I tried it again!

Bill Atwood was responsible for the Tee Dee design.

In addition Bill did most of the basic design work on the Conquests. Bruce Tunberg, Phillipe DesLespinay, Bill Fogler and others were instrumental in tuning and testing the Conquests. They were NOT a 1 man design.

Funny thing about the engine is that it had interchangeable piston and cylinder with the Rossi. And BOTH engines actually ran faster with the other's P/C sets! Nobody could ever figure out why.

i dont think think bill ever worked for roy ...not to my knowledge ...th atwood "wasp" predates th spacebug049..teedee ground th pistons for th hornets till we started makin inroads into their business then he refused to grind them for us .... now i knew roy cox and he would not have let bill or anyone know how he was able to get that grind on those pistons ...it was a well guarded secret....its kind of a barrel shape ...he was able to control it to within about .00001...thats right 10 millionths...ive measured thousands of em...virtually exactly th same size and shape... we honed th cylyders to th gage ....00005 total tolerance ...no indvidual hand fitting was necessary....the atwood had a straight piston ...thats why it wasnt as fast ...and fyi ...the origiginal teedee 049 was called a "spacebug" it had an aluminum stunt tank that held about 1/4 or 3/8 ounce of fuel ....larger than th babybees tank
...of course im gettin old now...maybe my memory is not that great anymore

Jim, I'm sorry, but I worked at C*x at the time Bill Atwood was there, and he knew all about how C*x ground it's pistons and cylinders. There wasn't any secret except that the equipment and temperature control were too expensive for our competitors to duplicate - if they even cared.

Roy did design a strange, custom, centerless grinder to put the taper on the pistons. Now that was an art form, as the correct taper seemed to vary from batch to batch. Dale Kirn might know more about it. I was never involved with actual engine production in any significant manner.

The "Tee Dee" you mention was the original Space Bug, and not close to a Tee Dee in any way shape, form or performance. Basically it was a Thermal Hopper with an integral tank. The Tee Dee was introduced in 1961, the previous reed engines much earlier than that.

well larry it seems im misinformed... re: th th secret grind room .... hmm ... so thats all it was? ... a temp controlled room?

Yup, that and careful maintainence of the measuring gages. Every piston and cylinder was measured to assure it was within tolerance. The "overs" and "unders" (a darn small percentage!)were set aside and fitted together separately and put into engines sent overseas, I think.

LAST EDITED ON Nov-09-04 AT 00:55 AM (CDT)
 
larry im sorry but i left dynamic and th hornet in 1961...there was no bill atwood there at that time nor was there a tee dee 1/2 a ... cox had just made th olympics .09 and .15 ...i always thought that th tee dees were scaled down olympics...cox didnt make a front rotary 1/2 a in 1961.... at least not on th market for sale ...bill mustve worked there after 1961...im not 100% sure but i think there was an agreement between him and bob that he not make engines for about 5 years after they split up ... dynamic was owned by th whitehead corp..there were lawyers involved ... believe me on this one ...so let me know when bill went to work there...i think ull find it coincides...with th 5 year thing ... there were lots of petty fueds that went on back then lol.....hell it was clanish inside th shop !!
larry ...do you have yahoo messenger? my yahoo addy is [email protected] ... my msn is [email protected] ....add me if u like and ill accept.. id love to talk to you ... that goes for anyone else as well ... jimmy ivey < ha ha ha ha ha

im not sure..but th "wen-mac" may have been made by anderson ..the anderson spitfire 049 was in th first airplane i ever owned an "aeromite"(1951)later they had wen-macs..which did look a lot like atwoods.... i think there were even a few aeromites with wasp's in them...i know there were a ton on firebabys with wasp's on them...firebabys were easy to fly ... aeromites weren't...but they looked cool!!

Steve:

Supposedly the WenMac's were based on the Atwood design. Atwood was kind of fading out at that point so it may have been a "shotgun marriage" for economics. I don't know for sure. still have a few pieces of an Atwood that ran well in its day. Not like a Cox but not bad. The rod failed eventually. At the time I had stuffed it into a neighbor's Wen Mac Corsair. Seem's to me it took some doing but basically fit well. Hey I was probably 12 at the time! A GOOD Wen Mac ran about on a par with an Atwood but maybe 1 in 5 could be called good. Most ran but only a few ran well. That's why we switched engines.

yes im real famaliar with th atwood 049...is it just an atwood..or is it an atwood wasp? .... bill atwood and bob holland were partners and built th wasp..after they split up ..bob kept th wasp name ..they flipped a coin or something like that and bill continued for a few months and built the atwood 049 ... the atwood didnt perform quite as well as th wasp so it wasnt a big seller ...so its kinda rare... bill also built lager engines as well in th 40s and earlie 50s he quit th model engine business and bought a couple of old steerman airplanes and went into th crop dusting business in 1959 ... well i guess th answer to question is ..no not a great performer ...but easy to start!! jim

As I recall, to lazy to go out to the shop and check the old magazines, the Wasp came first and was a good engine. A friend had one in a Baby Barnstormer. Atwoods as such were on the market for several years. There were FF and CL versions. The CL version had an extension under the crank. There were both 049 and 051's and special competition models. The Cadet was later and preformed pretty well. I flew a lot of 1/2 FF and CL sport/stunt in the 50's and the Atwoods were my motor of choice. I had a Spacebug and a Thermalhopper. These were more powerful, but I found the Atwoods to be more consistant and easier to handle. The Shriek was a fine engine. I have two of them from MECOA and one functional head. I would be very interested in obtaining a couple of modified heads.

I'd be interested in a couple of modified heads too; especially if they use the Nelson plugs. Any takers??

>yes im real famaliar with th atwood 049...is it just an
>atwood..or is it an atwood wasp? .... bill atwood and bob
>holland were partners and built th wasp..after they split up
>..bob kept th wasp name ..they flipped a coin or something
>like that and bill continued for a few months and built the
>atwood 049 ... the atwood didnt perform quite as well as th
>wasp so it wasnt a big seller ...so its kinda rare... bill
>also built lager engines as well in th 40s and earlie 50s he
>quit th model engine business and bought a couple of old
>steerman airplanes and went into th crop dusting business in
>1959 ... well i guess th answer to question is ..no not a
>great performer ...but easy to start!! jim

Hi Jim, Are You the same Jim Ivey that used to fly at Hawthorne High
school?(1950's) I flew U/C there with the Jack O'Blenness group.
Thanks;
Tony G

With superb timing, this post coincides with the latest Engine Collectors' Journal, which contains the start of an Atwood 049 listing/history.

Is there enough meat in the glow head to have it adapted to use the Nelson glow plug? If that could be done there would not only be a unlimited supply of cheap plugs the RPM would also go up.

Here are a few different configurations of the Atwood and a Holland Hornet. The second pic is an Atwood with no size indicated. They used the crankcase for both the .049 and .051.

LAST EDITED ON Nov-07-04 AT 07:40 AM (CDT)
 
on th hornets th thrust washers, spinners and venturi restricters were anodized.... blue for th .049 and red for th .051 ... jim

It may have been the same for the competiton model Atwoods, At least I have seen them with red and blue heads.

>on th hornets th thrust washers, spinners and venturi restricters were anodized.... blue for th .049 and red for th .051 ... jim

Mine wasn't. It's an .049 and is shown in the picture above.
Perhaps you are referring to a version II or a special run.

LAST EDITED ON Nov-08-04 AT 12:24 PM (CDT)
 
well i understand hi stopped anodizing them after i left as a cost cutting measure and anodize bleaches out after a while....if u find any old ones with an "M" stamped on th left side of th crankcase those were th "hot" ones ...they were guaranteed to turn 18,000 plus with a 5 1/2 4 when dennis shauer and i ran em ...we rejected anything that turned less than 17,500 ...th thermal hopper was rated a 17,000( it was more like 16,500 on average) w/a "6 3" ... any hornet we made would turn over 18,000 w/a "6 3'...(and a hornet would'nt reverse direction on ya in mid air like a thermal hopper would .... after th piston change they never performed that well...oh and by th way if u drill out a glowhead and tap it w a 1/4 28 thread for a glow plug...it wont perform as well...it lowers th compression and changes th combustion chamber...but dont take my word for it...i only built a few thousand of em...jim ivey

You are correct. I dug out my Hornet and checked it over. Under the .049 on the side of the crankcase is the roman numeral II so I guess mine is one of the later versions.

...And I know you intended to type 1/4x32 for the plug tap.

LAST EDITED ON Nov-08-04 AT 01:43 PM (CDT)
 
ohhhh ok ur right 32 pitch (nef)... i never knew of a roman numural II ... (musta been after i left) ...any way .... re: th anodize ...bob told me when he was explaining to me why he did that ... th crankcases and shafts are th same on both engines and sometimes they would get mixed up in production.....and if u were lucky ud catch em before they got shipped ... it was hard to see th difference with one mixed up in a few hundred of em(we moved them around in these big aluminum bread pans)...then when u found one you had to take it apart measure it ... u didnt want to send out an 051 as an 049 or vice versa ... you may cost someone a trophy or a record .. bob said "i wish id thought of that(anodizing) before i had th mold made ... i wouldnt have had #s put on em"(cause th mold had 049 and 051 cases in it)we could have put on th #s after assembly"... we always had more 051 cases ... didnt sell as many 051s even tho on the average they ran a couple hundred rpms faster...couldnt compete with th big "A"s ... jim

I agree with you on this one regarding putting a conventional plug in the engine.

however, I came across a Holland with an adapter for Norvel plugs! I 'bout stole that one!! $50 for the engine with special adapter and 6 Norvel glow heads. I still have cloth burns on my hand from pulling my wallet out too fast!

I also understand that Doug Galbreath may make a Holland/Nelson adapter! You would have to contact him. Hmm, I wonder if that would fit the Atwoods? I may have to do a trifle of testing when I get home...

larry ...its not th puttin th plug in thats th problem...any semi skilled machinist could do that ....its that shape in th combustion chamber....when hi and i built those 039s in 73...we went round n round about that...it ran ok ...but way better when i threw his head away and made my own....its like a logrythym...ya know th farther it goes th steeper it gets till its straight up in th center ...am i makin any sence to ya...thats all it was jim th plug diameter is to large to do that...hmmm unless u reshaped th inside of th plug...hell buddie..why dont ya just make glowheads?....theyed sell like hotcakes boostin power like that ... get one of th old hornet glowheads and look inside at th combustion chamber shape..thats what u need ...jim

It has been my experience with yours that a glowhead will beat a glow plug adapter head by massive amounts of rpm. The adapter I have for both my Wasp and the one for the Holland adapt the Norvel Glowhead buttons to the engine, and seem to equal or better the original head.

On the other hand, the Galbreath/Nelson heads I have tested on Tee Dees will outrun any other combination! The difference is that the design only exposes the plug's element to the combustion chamber, the rest of the head is 1-piece aluminum just like a glowhead.

As I understand it, somebody copied Galbreath's design, but not quite right, and his originals work the best.

BTW, I also used to fly with Jack OBleness, but at Mira Costa High with the "Cratermakers". I recently re-met Charles Osborne, one of our flying cronies. I let him fly my "El Bat" and he was doing a creditable job despite a 20 year layoff.

LAST EDITED ON Nov-09-04 AT 07:53 PM (CDT)
 
now larry ..it maybe its true about th hs ... was that at that th baseball stadium? or th football field? .... th lions exchange club sponsered a couple of meets there i dont remember th name of it ...i met jack th week after he won that trophy at 55nats...on th grass side at el camino college...i m sure u mean th jack with wife name doris son named jackie o'bleness ...badest man in th whole ##### town...and one of my heros ... ha ha ha ha ha .... last time i saw jack was at ascot stadium in 1977 he was 72 i belive he said...and still looked th same ... if u knew jack o'bleness ...u know me....jim

Actually, somewhere I have a newspaper clipping photo of you, and someone else in the background holding one of my planes. I don't know why I wasn't in the photo, perhaps I got cropped out. I'll did it up and copy it for you.

Jack's wife was "Wild Wilma" according to the name on their little race car.

##### larry ... ur right it was wilma ... my memory is crap ... i got "crs" desease ... i absolutely cannot place ya ... she was only about 5 feet tall ... if that ... and sweet as she could be ... he used to race midgets at th old "carrol speedway" ... said he got "black flagged" more than anybody ..."O'Bleness th meanace" he was a fun guy ... is he still around? ... and yes i would love to see any pics u might have ... my mom got rid of all th model airplane stuff after my dad died ... she hated them ... still does ...first thing to go was my trophys she sold eveyrthing to a guy next door to her for 100 dollars in 1969 ... hundreds of engines ... and my trophys including that "super charged" thunderbird 60 larry and swainey always wanted for their collections ive never seen or heard of another one...jim

LAST EDITED ON Nov-09-04 AT 01:08 AM (CDT)
 
phil ..im sorry i just read ur post again....thats not a needle valve in th tank ...what you have is called a timer tank...it would hold just enough fuel for a 20 second run for free flight after you tripped that little wire .... grab it by that knurl and pull up th wire should snap in and hold it up .... see if im right ...sorry i dint notice sooner...jim
ps i almost forgot how we ajusted th amount of fuel in th bottom tank...simple ..we put bb s in th bottom half....it does have a partition in it dont it?

LAST EDITED ON Nov-09-04 AT 01:41 AM (CDT)
 
Here's a engine you don't see very often a Holland Wasp Redhead, Bob jumped on the anodizing craze in the early 50's as well. Look close you can see the 'H' on the side under 049

Atwood designed the WenMac for their plastic models to replace the Anderson engines.

The heads on a Wen-Mac will work on the Wasp but the cylinder will not.

The complete list (year,model) of Atwood/ Holland 049-051 engines is located under files at this web site:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/049Collectors/

Thanks,

well i dont recall ever seeing anything like that for sale in any hobby shop...bob had a lot of things like that in his personal collection purple, green, gold, yellow,all kinds of color combinations cases also were anodized ... unless someone else did that to that engine ... its probably from bobs personal collection ....and he may have given it to someone .... there was also ONE hornet "29" ... looks just like a giant 049 ... i almost talked him out of it....he started to hand it to me ...then changed his mind ...n said "nah i think ill keep that" theres also one ball bearing case hornet 049... it would consistently turn about 23500 rpm on a 5 1/2 4 .... th bearings cost more than th engine did ... thats why it was never produced...it also leaked fuel like hell ... anna may have some of this stuff ...jim

I got engine from several years ago from a well know MECA guy, who had it in his collection for years. They were sold to the public, but like yellow backplate Strato Bugs, there pretty rare. Many different Manufactures tried anodizing their engines in the early fifties to try to boost sales. In '53 Atwood had introduced red, blue, yellow & green heads for U/C, FF, etc.

LAST EDITED ON Nov-10-04 AT 01:58 AM (CDT)
 
mark i was winnin contests in 1953 ... so i dont have th best memory ... white lead in th paint ya know ... jim
ps: whats a meca guy?

MECA -Model Engine Collectors Association