So I've been collecting about a half dozen Fox .35's, most from the early 50's without the enclosed head bolt bosses. I was sorting through parts and cases, trying to figure out what's salvageable and what I can pitch or donate to our TGD Contest raffle.

I came across a really neat backplate gasket that makes perfect sense, as opposed to the crappy factory cork gasket that pinches the backplate ears. Somebody needs to produce (laser cut) these! Are these home made or an early factory gasket?

Also there was one cylinder liner that had a machined hole just below the bypass port. An attempt by Fox to eliminate the dreaded Fox burp or ? Never seen this on a Fox .35

Stupid Cat!

Cylinder Liner

Not too much to contribute to the Fox stuff except (as I remember) when I took the sleeve out of a newer Fox, (I think) it had the same small hole.  I called Fox to order a new crank case (long sad story) and when I asked about the hole, I was told it was simply a manufacturing issue and did not affect the run.  My memory is a bit foggy as this happened at the end of 2008 just after I got back into the hobby after a 55-ish year layoff.

As for your "Stupid Cat", here is a picture of mine.  We had to put her to sleep just 2 weeks ago as she developed Lymphoma and it was well along when we discovered it.  Her name was Lily because she found us around Easter of 2004.  She was skin and bones at that time and had a BB in her side.  Although she carried the BB with her "at all times" you can see she never got close to "skin and bones" again.  Enjoy your "Stupid Cat" because you will miss her when she is gone.

     Hi Doug:


     When I was being taught the machine shop practices, I was taught that this hole is called a hobbing hole.  It was used to locate the piece of work in the same position as it was machined by different machines. Hobbing was a method of cutting material on a milling machine,  There were also hobbing cutters to make some of these cuts.


                                                                                                                    Stay well,

                                                                                                                    Frank

My cat's a male that gets into everything. He requires a lot of attention, hence the sarcasm. He's a good mouser and very territorial. I'll keep him, lol.
The hobbing holes make sense, used for indexing the ports I assume.

               Dennis, while some of us like green M&M's a few of us still like the red ones.

For some reason I had trouble posting with pics. All files were less than 1000 KB?

The limit is 1,000 kb total for all the picture files in each post, not each picture you post.

IrfanView does a nice job of resizing and compressing pictures, and it's FREEware. It's also easy to figure out. If I could figure it out, most anybody can. I had Olympus and Canon software and couldn't figure it out...but can process a jpeg with IrfanView in under 15 seconds...and get them down to under 100kb, often first try. As far as I know, you want to use jpeg type files, as they're the most compact...least kb. I have noticed that I can get a jpeg right on 50kb and not be able to post it on SSW...I think because the name of the picture adds a kb or two. I try to make my picture titles contain the information I have on it, so they may get a bit long.

I suggest resizing to 500 to 800 pixels wide, save and then compress at about 80% or a bit less. Later, you can skip the intermediate "saves", after you've gained some confidence and experience. When I first go through my pictures after transferring them from the camera, I give it a title with all the info I have. At each step in the rework, I just add %, %%, %%%, etc., to give me a clue as to which version is which. When I'm done, I delete all except the last version and then remove the %'s from it. They are transferred from camera into a desktop folder called "Test Pictures". You can call it what you want, of course, but avoid getting it confused with folder names in "My Documents", which is where I store my pictures...in a folder called "Model Pics and Plans" or maybe in an alternate folder, "Model Information", which is more for text, but also includes "how to" articles. Just FYI.

When taking digital pictures, it's really critical to be aware of the background. You don't want to post a picture of a model plane sitting on grass or rough textured surface, because that sort of background takes a lot of kilobytes. We're interested in a crisp picture of that fine model airplane, not your lawn!  Steve 

<snip>  I used a O ring on the backplate.  I haven't run it yet to see how it works.  I've routinely used O rings on screw in backplates.

Does the backplate sit flush on the case when you do that?
I'd bevel the case edge slightly and machine a groove in the backplate for the O-ring if I did that (depending on which backplate you used)

The gasket you show looks like one  that Eric Rule  of  RSM cuts on his  laser, they hole is for locating on machines and is normally on the exhaust side, and has  NO affect  on charging of the cylinder.

Randy