What 1/2A engine are you trying to start?

The Ceramic coated cylinders on the Norvels are pretty resistive. You need to make contact with the glow plug body itself.

If you don't have a such a cylinder, then I would look at where the wires are making contact on the various clips and make sure there is a good contact there.

Nothing wrong with two of the newer D (Alkaline) cells in parallel, with a good glow plug clip, and properly soldered leads. Should last at least a full season under normal use. Use a high wattage soldering gun (or iron), to spot solder the leads to the batteries. Avoid low wattage irons, as they will actually transfer more heat to the cells, because it takes longer to melt the solder.

Heavy speaker wire, or 115 volt extension cord wire works better than the thin wire supplied with the Cox plug clips. You don't have to remove all of the Cox clip wire if you would rather not mess with the crimp connections, because wire resistance is dependent on the length and size, not size alone. Solder the heavier wire to the Cox clip wire an inch or so from the clip, and insulate the solder joints with shrink tubing.

The Cox glow plug clips are cheap enough, and work very well with Cox plugs, and Norvel type plugs.

Avoid all plug and jack type connectors with anything but a power panel, and particularly with ni-cad batteries. Ni-cads are lower voltage (1.2v) to begin with, and most friction type connections (plugs and clips) are too high a resistance to use with them. Any corrosion, contamination, or loss of spring tension, will quickly reduce your glow plug current.

For bench running, I'm still using the old 1.5 volt hobby battery I bought from a hobby shop a couple years ago!

Bill

OK.  Finally got the necessary round tuit.

With a pair of alkaline 'D' cells in parallel, 18-gauge (or maybe 16) and a Sulivan clip, things started right up.  With a bit of cylinder swapping, I even got a high power run.  Tee hee!  Now if only it'd stop raining...

I did add some heat shrink to the top of the Sulivan clip (the part that engages the button on the head) -- the two bits of metal were awfully close together; the heat shrink should keep things from getting mashed together too easily.  Maybe I'll build a holster for the clip, but if it works...

Recieved an Eveready 1.5 v. hobby battery in the mail today.
Maybe not the power of the Hobico 4 cell, but way more oomph
than 2 D cells. Really lights em up.

  That's because inside the box are 4 D cells.

    Brett

Too bad we can't get the old telephone batteries as they were called.  As Johnny Clemons stated, wire two of them together and fly for the whole season.

I've been using one of the plastic Cox battery holders for my glow plug igniter. I use a dubro clip to make the glow plug connection. This works so well and is so easy (just 2 simple alkaline D cells in parallel), I can't see why the pining for the old batteries from yesteryear.

When I am flipping props, I always get a start in 2-4 flips with this setup. It's so easy a caveman CL flyer ( ) can do it!

oops (maybe I'm not as smart as a caveman), I see this is the 1/2 A thread. Well when I do my Cox half a stuff, I replace the dubro clip with one of the springy things that work on a Cox head (not the Cox clip)--more of the thing that looks like a clothespin clip. If I am flying a Norvel, I use the dubro clip as mentioned.