Cox Memories

Because people have shown some interest, I will try to recall some of the memories I have when I worked in Customer service at Cox from 1979-1981.  

We had a small arbor press that could accept any number of fixtures on it's base. The fixture we used the most was for pressing  the prop drive plate on and off the crankshafts. The fixture had drivers, and stops for all the different engines. The engine crankcase was placed on the fixture base pointing straight up, and the appropriate diameter driver was inserted into the press head. The driver pushed the crank downwards until the drive plate splines were exposed and then a step in the driver stopped it from going any further to prevent you from crushing the case.

To press on a prop drive plate, the crank was inserted into the case and appropriate stop block was placed on the crankshaft. Next, the crankcase and crank with stop block inside was place of the fixture base and the prop drive plate was pushed onto the splines by hand. After inserting the proper driver, the prop drive plate was pressed on until the driver's
stop bottomed out. Then we checked to see the crank would spin freely.

Interestingly, the drivers were double ended: one end was for removal, the other for installation, so you simply took it out of the press head and flipped it around for the required operation.

BTW, we never re-used a prop drive plate once it was pressed off because they would come loose if pressed back on again...they are one-shot.

I did previously describe the base, sleeve and driver used to install early Bug series piston rod "C" ring retainers. BTW, we had no provisions for removing the C ring,  This was an obsolete fixture we got from the assembly line and never used it in customer service while I was there.

We also had a fixture to check the squareness of the cases to make sure the bore for the cylinder was perfectly perpendicular to the reamed bore for the crankshaft.  Occasionally, we would get customers who  complained that their engine was still spitting dark grey oil on the fuselage and wing after several runs, which is not normal. This was an out of square case, and we used the fixture to confirm this and also check new cases before we used them for a repair.

Normally, we would not completely rebuild your engine, as that took about 20 minutes. Instead, we would hand build engines that we had tested and broken in, and would offer you one for the rebuild price.  Some customers would want their original engine back, especially if it was one they had won with in competition. At the time I worked at Cox, we had a very limited amount of old-stock tapered cylinder and piston assemblies, so it was sometimes not possible to get your TD .049  rebuilt and have it turn up the revs it used to. Fortunately, most customers sent, or brought in reed valve engines so this was not too big of a problem. We did however spend time building up TDs  from old stock parts and breaking them in to find  real good ones for customer replacements. This was easier than rebuilding them in many cases.

We had lots of new old stock, it was stacked on racks in boxes and in bins which we got from production. This enabled us to build versions of engines which had been discontinued or changed if we needed to. We also had piles of plastic parts for the planes and cars that we salvaged from the returns piles for replacement parts. The packaged replacement parts were handled by the main plant as they were done there and kept in the warehouse. Those were typically for people ordering them by mail. If you were a walk-in customer, you typically got a replacement part for free if it was not packaged. We did have a large engine parts rack in the walk-in customer service waiting area stocked with almost every part for the Reed, Medallion, and TD series, which the girls at the front counter kept stocked.

For those of you who remember the walk-in customer service area at the main building, before it was moved to the Helms building where I worked, it was quite different. They had displays and one of every current plane hanging from the ceiling, lots of free catalogs and literature, and the option to go on a free tour of the plant while your Cox product was being serviced. Leisure made a bunch of changes after they took over, so it was not the same as it was when Leroy ran the company. BTW, Cox had product museum which I'll describe later.