old story with blanks--fox .35 stunt.

LAST EDITED ON Jun-11-06 AT 03:39 PM (CST)
 
in the 60s --at the club field --in alexandria louisiana

i was flying flite streaks with mccoy .35 read heads and was about 8 years old and had recently learned inverted and 8s.

one day when dad took me to the feild there was a man i didnt know who had just rolled up his lines.there at the edge of the circle was a beutiful fw 190 stunt ship in camo finish. the man said he was in town to visit his parents and had drug out his old planes that he left when he moved away(the impression i had was he had been gone along time-10 or 15 years)as i was admiring the fw190 i heard him say he wanted to sell it.i couldnt help asking how much.he said $10.00!--i begged dad to buy it for me and he did.
never got to fly it as it turned out that the pick up in the tank was broken and as a clumsy kid i knew that i would destroy it fixing it.it hung on the shop wall for years.i later found out this airplane was probably a modifyed barn stormer.

one day i pulled the engine and mounted it on a magician 35 for an early slow combat event in longveiw texas-in early 70s?(i know--im nuts)
i flew fast combat so this was a last minet type thing.
the magican died about 30sec into the first match and the engine was oiled and put away.

i oil all my old engines every few years and when i did this recently i noticed that this is know ordinary fox .35 stunt.
it is sand cast(not permanent or die)
it has 4 bolt head
it has 2 bolt backplate
it has no markings(no fox or .35)

what i have found in the reshearch i have done
that the first hand made fox .35 stunts had only 2 back plate bolt and coppies of fox stunt had 3 as the 2 bolt was not production there fore no original to copy---i cant find this link now.

duke states that he only made 2 sand cast engines.i found this info at http://www.craftsmanshipmuseum.com/Fox.htm
duke says
I had built my .35 by that time, and I felt that this one was worth producing. Very little was happening down at Slate in regard to the .59’s, and yet I was tied up with a contract that he wasn’t quite ready to release me from. So, I started building stunt .35’s. The first two were actually sand cast from wood patterns, but the cost of the castings in this manner was prohibitive. I knew that I had to get lower cost castings.

i wish i would have shown this engine to duke at 74/75 lake charles nats as he could have identifyed it im sure.

my questions are

1 is this one of the first 2 fox .35 stunts?

2 if so who was this stunt flier that had this engine?

3 was this engine given to him by duke to test?

none of the still living local old timers remember much-- we blame that on nitro benzene ambroid and aero gloss!(lol)

any one with info or leads on info would be great!

thanks everyone
David

David, What Duke Fox was referring to when he changed to permanent molds was that his first two Sandcast Engines were made with a wooden mold, and that all subsequent Sandcast engines were made with permanent molds, or metal molds. The key is -- they were still being cast in sand! He evidentaly sold hundreds and hundreds of those Sandcast 2-bolt and 3-bolt Backplate engines which all had a 4-bolt Head. I have 10 or 11 of them myself. When he converted to Die-cast vs Sandcast he also converted to a 6-bolt Head.

This is the first model Fox 35, courtesy of someone on this forum.

This is the second model.

Hi Garf,

I think you got the pictures with the wrong captions.

The top two pictures are of the 6 head bolts (2nd version) and the bottom two are the 4 head bolts (first version).

Wrong. It is an optical illusion. There has never been a 6 bolt head/2 bolt backplate model.

Hi Phil,

Thanks for the correction on my part. That optical illusion almost matches David Copperfield making the Staute of Liberty disappear! LOL!!

Do you know anything about a recent post naming the 8 bolt heads Fox made that would fit either 4 or 6 bolt heads?

Strange, though.. you CAN see three screws on the visible side of the engine. Not just the head, but the shank of the bolt between the head and the top of the cylinder casting.

I think Iskander has it. In fact you can see 5 screws on the top two pics. Possibly a case of someone converting a 4 bolt to an 8 bolt? Having a constant thickness (and thick) top fin allows this. The head fin contours also support this.

Further to my post No.8, didn't these thin-head first Foxes suffer from a tendency for head warps? Maybe the "8 bolt conversion" is an attempt to control this.

That is exactly the reason it was done, to control head warpage.

I've owned a couple of Sandcast (permanent mold) Foxes with 8 bolt heads. I've heard two stories regarding them. One story says that Duke Fox modified a few of them in the early run of the sandcasts before the thick head came out. The other story is that Individuals did it to their own engines. Both stories are probably true.

Another interesting head is the six bolt head that Fox supplied to the 4 bolt head owners when the Fox factory ran out of the original 4 bolt sandcast heads. Duke took an undrilled 6 bolt head, and drilled it to fit the 4 bolt sandcast crankcase. I've seen a few of these around.

...and the three bolt backplate was also likely the result of 'lessons learned' -- too many got punched off the engine under moderate impact. ...or warped from over-enthusiastic tightening.

I don't have any info on the engine but I was amazed to find someone that flew at the field in Alexander La. My brother was in the Air Force and stationed there in the early 60's and I would spend the summers with him. I guess you are talking about the field at the park with the F86 mounted in it. I flew old scientific models and a super ringmaster. Great old times. All but gone!

Dave -- You're right! I used the wrong word. I should have said "permanent pattern" or "metal pattern", vs "wood pattern" instead of using the word molds. The pattern makes the cavity in the SAND that the molten metal is poured into. This is still a SAND casting.

Interesting...

http://home.planet.nl/~wakke007/negatief/investme.htm
http://home.planet.nl/~wakke007/negatief/negat_0.htm
http://home.planet.nl/~wakke007/engines/engine0.htm