Interesting Backplate

It's hard to tell if it was dyed, it seems to be brown throughout. The color does seem slightly transparent, not solid like the red black and gray ones.

Looking at it on eBay I couldn't tell what color it was. I was hoping it would turn out to be a rare orange one so bought it. To my surprise it ended up being brown. As I took the engine apart I kind of expected to find that it was white but dirty and stained on the exterior. It ended up being brown everywhere - inside, outside and upside down. I'm kinda confused.

Well.. it's brown.. but I kinda' like it. Matched-up with a Cox Sopwith Camel propeller.. would look pretty nice on the nose of a little 1/4A size C/L hotrod bipe.. like a Cox Lil' Stinker "Pitts".. except a tad bit bigger. Maybe 18" TWS (Top Wing Span) butterscotch tone paint.. with a wing-walker..

It could be a dyed backplate, but also a result of the flushing of the mold for a color change. Most of the time these produced swirled types of a tooling change with the mold so probably not that.

Assuming it wasn't dyed by somebody I would assume is was probably a test of the mold at the beginning of a production run. This was always done although more often in the same color as the finished product. Sometimes they would use a little bit of a different colored material to distinguish the 'test' to ensure there are no issues. Mostly these were scrapped, but sometimes they were grabbed by machine operators which make for parts floating around like this.

Matt