Post Leisure Dynamics Black Widow

GallopingGhostler Sat Jan 10, 2015 9:25 am

To my delight I clicked on the link to the Cox collectors engines site and found:

https://sites.google.com/site/coxenginecollection/2000-black-widow-estes

Post Leisure Dynamics Black Widow 12291410

(Google doesn't allow one to reference and display their photos, so I downloaded it.)

I enjoyed reading the commentary. I was unfamiliar with Estes as the only engines I purchased from them were the $7 Sure Starts, prior to them getting out of the engine business. This was an example of an engine that should have been instead labeled as say a Golden Bee, that it only had the power of a Babe Bee.

TDbandit Sat Jan 10, 2015 11:06 am

Ahh the ol "Wannabe Black Widow" I have one and when I got it new, it was accualy slightly under the Babe Bee in power out of box. This was partly due to excessive slop in the Ball/Socket along with a steel reed which had burrs on it's edges causing it not to seat properly and flashing in the venturi. I reset the ball/socket, cleaned up the venturi and installed a Mylar reed along with a TD head and it helped the power a bit. While it runs well, it's still not quite on par with the original BW. Anyway heres a pic of mine. (Bandit)

Post Leisure Dynamics Black Widow Estes_10

Marleysky Sat Jan 10, 2015 1:14 pm

Is it my poor eyesight, or the angle of the picture? It looks like there is only one vent/fill tube nipple on the back plate? On the 1975 BW there are no vents on backplate, only on the tank. Thanks, one eye Marley Shocked

Ken Cook Sat Jan 10, 2015 1:31 pm

Your eyesight is still good. The plastic backplate on these used a single nipple filler with a pin hole vent hole directly next to it. I recall these in use when I purchased Cox Babe Bee engines in and around 1987-88. I would purchase them and sometimes receive a metal backplate and sometimes a plastic version. I'm quite surprised that this didn't cause a lawsuit. You would fill through the nipple and the fuel would come out of the pinhole with enough force to squirt as much as high as 3' which usually ended up directly into your eyes if you didn't know any better. The non vented tank crippled the performance of the Estes so called Black Widow. It suffered inverted and as mentioned, the power didn't match it's earlier variants. The fact that you could no longer fly inverted renders the engine useless in my opinion. I would drill the tank and install my own tubes into it. While I've found the plastic backplates to work well, I wasn't a fan of the plastic tanks due to having them develop air leaks between the tank and backplate. Ken

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