LAST EDITED ON Dec-05-04 AT 11:44 AM (CST) >Ted: I just ran out to the shop, and checked my NIB Stunt
>Supreme. It has absolutely nothing on the side, only the
>blank, machined off circle on the case. However, I have
>another one, with the "SS" stamped on. And, surely, someone
>has one with cast "SS" letters.
>
>I have a four bolt head .32, with cast numbers. And a six
>bolt head .32, stamped numbers.
>
>The Combat Specials ("CS") that I have seen has cast
>letters. But surely someone has one stamped. Somewhere...
>
>By the way, I think that the final price for the ebay motor,
>with the broken fin, was market correct, given its flaws.
>
>Currell
Hi Currell,
It's fun going back in time like this. I know well (although perhaps not having owned as many examples as you) that the Johnson engines were a "varietal" assortment. As I understand it the little case "s" came about when George Aldrich was talking with Hi about a good stunt engine with a little more "poop" than the Fox (maybe when the Nobler was in one of its "growth" stages). George felt (properly I think) that the .35 was too hot an engine for stunt. This was probably the result of the very high compression ratio that worked great for flat out two stroke runs in combat ships (see Riley Wooten) but gave way too hard a break for stunt.
Hi is supposed to have married the .29 crank (which produced a stroke of 0.718") with the rest of a .35 (bore of 0.750), and reduced the compression ratio from 11.2 to one down to 6.5 to one. This C.R. was simply the result of the fact that the piston didn't go as far up in the sleeve with the shorter throw crank.
It apparently worked great (a fact I can vouch for) and the "s" was born. As you suggest, it was easier to simply file off the cast .35 from the side of the case and stamp it with the little "s".
I have no idea if George ever used the resulting hermaphrodite but I'll bet there is someone on here that will know.
I still have my original "s" and hope to install it in a Ruffy for VSC this year. I flew a Ruffy at my first Nats as a Junior in 1959. That one had a Fox in it that blew a crankshaft during a practice flight the night before the Finals (in those days, as Currell probably knows, we had so many Junior flyers you had to have qualiflying rounds )The shaft blew during the overhead eights and the prop just started windmilling creating a ton of drag. Instead of simply flying out of the overhead and landing the darn thing nearly stopped straight overhead. I was able to run and catch it just before impact but wasn't able to get it turned quickly enough to keep from tearing the wing mounted gear out of it.
Oh, boy. Engine shot, toy airplane broke bad and only hours to go before the finals. A nats story repeated probably thousands of times over the years.
Duke Fox, always in the market for a good "Fox" story, looked me up and took my engine for a rebuild. Bill and Betty Bell (a then pretty well known husband and wife free flight team) stopped by my table in the work hangar (one of the biggest losses of the modern Nats era) and offered to teach me the wonders of fiber glassing broken parts into reasonably functional aircraft structures.
Bill and Betty stayed up late to get the structure rebuilt; I stayed up all night to get the torn out areas recovered and a couple of coats of dope on them; and, early the next morning, Duke showed up with the rebuilt engine that he had fitted "a little bit loose" and the advice to "run a couple of tanks through it before you fly. Then, go out and win one for the gipper"...or something like that.
Well, the perfect end to the story would have been a Junior National Championship (and might well have if the following hadn't happened). But, the first flight the predictable happened, the engine overheated and quit early in the flight. Ran a couple more tanks through it and came out for my last official. In those "olden" days the finals were just like the rulebook, two officials, best single flight counts. I wasn't out of it yet.
Well, the engine ran better for most of the flight and the pattern was going well but toward the end of the flight the engine started to heat up and sag. I don't recall whether it was before or after the cloverleaf. At any rate the engine slowed almost to an idle and I had no choice but to land under power. Unfortunately the engine didn't quit but instead continued at low speed and taxied the airplane around...and around...and around for a huge number of laps (probably only a dozen or so but it seemed like forever)
When it finally quit, it was long past the end of the eight minute limit. Alas, no pattern points. Don't remember if I ever tried to do the math (I'm sure I did and the fact that I don't remember probably means I wouldn't 'a won anyway) but even with the loss of those 25 points I ended up in sixth place which, considering the trauma that preceded it, wasn't half bad. I do know that it was the only time a young friend from Seattle, Dick Gilbert, ever beat me and he came in third. Never let me forget it.
I wonder if Dick's still out there somewhere?
Sorry....everybody's got stories that are more valuable to them than others.
Fly Stunt
Ted Fancher
p.s. Oops, almost forgot. The "s" that's going into my Ruffy is the same engine I was using in the Ares I built right after that Nats. (Having succombed to the aura of Bill W. and his little blue one that won the Walker Cup that year) The same engine I was using when Shareen and I started going out in 1960. Has a lot of good memories going for it. It has been reconditioned in an unusual manner because it got hard to start late in its life. The cylinder has been rehoned and the piston chromed and fitted. This is an really unusual approach to the usual chromed sleeve vice piston and I've got my fingers crossed it will work OK metallurgically.
Anybody experienced such a mod? Good? Bad?
