Venom - some details

Venom .049 (0.8 cm³)

Manufactured in 1996 (#140)

The Venom was the last and finest high performance engine development of the Bee type engines. It had been designed by Larry Renger for control line Mouse Racing events and featured some interesting details. Most of these features were based on modifications developed for Cox engines by Paul Gibeault.

The crankshaft with cutouts for better balancing comes from the 1996 Killer Bee. The lightweight piston has sub-induction and a reduced wall thickness which makes it somewhat fragile. When not run in properly, the piston top may come off and also the strength of the crankshaft is close to its limits. Therefore speed was limited to 22,000 r.p.m. on the ground. Additionally, a single narrow boost port was added to one side of each transfer channel of the cylinder to improve scavenging. A similar porting system had been used on the early Tee Dee. The venturi passing through the fuel tank has the same throat diameter as the Black Widow (2.08 mm, Babe Bee, Golden Bee: 1.54 mm). To literally top it off, a high compression glow head and a few head gaskets to play with the compression ratio were added.

Similar performance can be obtained by combining reworked Golden Bee and Tee Dee parts and it is astonishing that even in 2003, in the age of ABC and AAC piston and liners, these "old" steel piston/cylinder engines still hold AMA Class I mouse racing records.

The Venom has been manufactured in a run of 1000 engines only, which is unusually small for a Cox engine. 

Note that some persons try to sell faked Venom engines. Be careful, especially when the engine comes without box and instructions and when the description does not explicitly state that it really is a Cox Venom engine.