O&R .23s

[Vekenti 1]

Hello, I recently acquired 2 O&R 23s for a very good deal. I've been flying glow engines in my planes for about a year and a half now, but wanted to get into gas and these little engines seemed like a great start. If I get them running good I might even put them into my RC DC-3 :).

 

I already have both engines taken apart and the internals are quite clean. Pleasantly surprised for engines that can be as old or older than myself. I'm going to mount a carb on both to convert them to R/C.

 

I'm not really sure on how these engines really work, specifically the spark/ignition part.  I know back in their days there were ignition coils to produce the spark. Those small coils seem few and far between now so I have been trying to find alternatives.

 

Has anyone used CDI on these old sparkies? I have bought an used CDI unit to test it out. What else can I use to run ignition with these engines?

 

Any help would be appreciated,

 

Noah.

Edited October 10, 2020 by Vekenti
Pictures

[factory 487]

 

I've got a few of the O&R model plane engines in my collection but haven't tried to run any of them, none of them had a coil with them but modern small ignition coils are still made, here is one I found with a quick search; http://www.springmillsmfg.com/model-airplaine-ignition-coils.html

The coils would have been used with the points in the engine, capacitor across the points and a low voltage battery pack.

 

Later on O&R started offering glow plugs for these to compete with other manufacturers, this was a big mistake as they tended to run too hot causing the alloy con-rod to fail, they later used a steel con-rod which resulted in the cylinder heads being blown off. This gave the O&R model engines a very bad reputation, they eventually they stopped making them and went into producing the larger Compact Industrial engines from the 1960's onwards.

 

David