Hello
Mecoa has posted an old video of Fox Manufacturing in 1992 . The video is in two parts and is interesting from a historic perspective but be warned it is not the best viewing for 'entertainment' and some may find it shocking if they have not worked in a factory before . The camera man is not welcomed by all and it was taken a day after Duke Fox's passing but it reflects the era very well.
It is very interesting and I don't see the "shocking" parts (although I just skimmed it). Maybe the part that no one would have expected is that there isn't some huge line of machines cranking out parts on an automated assembly line. Talk "factory" and you think of a big building with smokestacks and looking like a Bugs Bunny cartoon*. This is the reality - small batches of maybe 25-100, production set up with jigs on manual machines, assembled, then sold off over years. A few days of production of a 45BB, and switch to a 35 Stunt, knock out 100 of them over a few days, then on to the next group (whichever engine you are getting low on stock).
I can't tell for sure, but I would guess that most of the activity you see was associated with other manufacturing, not model engines, because the model engine business hasn't been the majority of the Fox output for many decades. As far as I know, they are still in business with contracted machine work, just not model engines (where they can't make any money for a variety of reasons).
Brett
p.s. *
https://archive.org/details/Powerhouse_657
Topic: Fox engine manufacturing video (Read 1498 times)